The Canadian women (the papers keep referring to them as "teens" which I have mixed feelings about) who are leading the fight to convince the IOC to add women's ski jumping to the 2010 Vancouver Games have received the support of IOC member Beckie Scott, a nordic skier who won gold in Salt Lake City in 2002.
Scott calls the IOC's policy unjust in this day and age. And although many are considering her vocal support from within a positive, it remains to be seen just how much sway one person, an athlete member, has.
Some details about the negotiations have come out and they sound fascinating--especially from the perspective of a young athlete:
Zoya Lynch called the back-and-forth arguments between the IOC and the female ski jump lobby "scary" and intimidating. The 16-year-old Calgary high school student said, "We try to intimidate them by getting the government behind us and they try to intimidate us by suggesting it might jeopardize getting [ski jumping for women] into the 2014 Games."
But, as the article points out, the "IOC is a private organization and isn't accountable to governments or their policies." This is a little bit of an overstatement, I would think, given the politics involved in the Olympic bidding process. And I hope that this fight shows that the IOC is not some untouchable, immovable organization--that it has to play fair too.
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