WASHINGTON—Two congressmen want the U.S. Olympic Committee to try to get the IOC to reverse its decision to keep women’s ski jumping out of the 2010 Vancouver Games.
House Committee on Energy and Commerce chairman John Dingell and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations chairman Bart Stupak, both Michigan Democrats, sent a letter Friday to USOC CEO Jim Scherr asking, “what, if any, action you propose to overturn the IOC’s discriminatory decision.”
“We question why women’s ski jumping—a sport in which 83 women, representing 14 countries, competed in worldwide competition on three continents during the 2006/2007 season—is excluded from the Olympic Games when sports with far fewer competitors, such as women’s bobsled, luge, and skeleton, have already been adopted as Olympic events,” the lawmakers wrote.
Dingell and Stupak asked the USOC to brief House committee staff within three weeks, and to provide written answers to a list of questions before that.
USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said the IOC, working with the international federations for sport and the organizing committees for the various Olympic Games, determines the sports program.
“We are in full support of increasing opportunities for participation in the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” Seibel said. “Sports such as women’s ice hockey and women’s snowboardcross have been outstanding additions to the Winter Games program. Other sports deserve that same consideration and, ultimately, an opportunity to be on the program.”
IOC president Jacques Rogge said during a visit to Vancouver in February that women’s ski jumping shouldn’t be part of the 2010 Winter Games because the sport has not yet reached the standard for being included in an Olympics.
“If you have three medals, with 80 athletes competing on a regular basis internationally, the percentage of medal winners is extremely high,” Rogge said. “In any other sport, you are speaking about hundreds of thousands, if not tens of millions of athletes, at a very high level, competing for one single medal. We do not want the medals to be diluted and watered down. That is the bottom line.”
He also said at the time he expects the sport to eventually gain Olympic status.
“This is not discrimination,” Rogge said. “This is just the respect of essential technical rules that say to become an Olympic sport, a sport must be widely practiced around the world … and have a big appeal. This is not the case for women’s ski jumping, so there is no discrimination whatsoever.”
