After Atalanta

...energy. You thought I was going to say time, right? But no, this column from the Toronto Star highlighting the 10 hottest "babes" of the Vancouver Olympics raises so many issues and I just don't have the energy to address all the hackneyed arguments about why it's so ok to run these types of columns. So just two things. The author, Rosie DiManno, makes a point of noting her gender in the introduction saying that political correctness landed this column topic in her lap over those of her male colleagues. I've said it before, and now I must say it again, just because you're a female sports journalist does not mean you have any kind of commitment to women's sports or an inherent progressive (not that decent equitable coverage is an especially progressive notion) feminist philosophy. One of the arguments about why there is such poor coverage of women's sports is that sports media is a man's world. Adding more women, some argue, would make things bet...

I've been thinking a lot about bullying lately. I live in an area under intense scrutiny for a recent bullying event that lead to a suicide in a local school. It is the second such incident in about a year in my area. The film Straightlaced about teens who do not observe conventional gender norms and often confront bullying because of it is being shown at a local theater this weekend, partly in response to these incidents. And these things have made me think about Johnny Weir. He was pretty much overlooked in Vancouver. This was not surprising. The US Skating Federation has never really appreciated his outspoken ways and neither have other conservative factions of the international skating community. This was his last Olympic games. His style of skating is not rewarded under the current scoring system (which is desperately in need of another overhaul I think. Curling is easier to understand than how jumps and spins and footwork elements are scored!) I have been watching Johnny Wei...

Thank you, Doug Speirs, for this .

I complained yesterday about the crap I had to "deal" with in the form of the criticism levied against women's hockey by the powers-that-be, namely Monsier Rogge who wants the women to improve the depth of their game or else face elimination from the Olympics. But it's not nearly as much crap as the members of the gold-winning Canadian women's team found themselves in the morning after. Because long after the crowd had dispersed the women went back on the ice with champagne and beer and cigars. There were, however, members of the press still in the arena. And thus there are now pictures . And the IOC is investigating. Given that they kicked Scotty Lago out of the games for behavior that occurred outside an Olympic venue, one would think things do not look good for the team. But it's also a tad more difficult to kick out a whole team, that happens to have a gold medal, and also is from the host country. Not that they should be kicked be out. (Lago's ousting...

Not my own--most of the time anyway. But all this neoliberal, neo-queer stuff is really confusing. Especially in the context of the Olympics. So according to Pat Griffin , the person I go to for such information, there are only 4 out athletes at these Winter Olympics (all women), plus Johnny Weir who sometimes epitomizes these neoliberal, neo-queer discussions for me. But four! That number is quite low. So we enter the "it's the 21st century and I don't need to be out; I am who I am" kind of discussion countered by the idea that that's just baloney (articulate, eh?) and queer people are making themselves more invisible in this age of increasing visibility and controversy over issues of sexuality. But this latter argument is hard to put on someone like Weir, who will not discuss his sexuality because it's "private" (though he has no problems with privacy when showing his ass on his Sundance Channel show) but is not at all subtle in his behaviors and c...

That's the message I am getting after the start of the men's single luge competition was moved farther down the track in an attempt to temper the high speeds that seemed to result in the death of Georgian luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili,* during a training run last Friday. This story is not breaking news of course, but I started to hear the grumbles about the start's move pretty much the day it started. Why? Well, one because it corroborates the party line that Kumaritashvili died because of luger error and not because of the course, which is on record as the fastest in the world. And one would think that given the pride those involved in the endeavor had over the speediness that they would have taken certain precautions. But I guess all that hubris gets in the way of covering steel beams with padding. But the second and more relevant (to me) reason for the disgruntledness is because the new start is the women's singles start. I am sorry--it was where the women were slated...

...from about an Olympic ice rink length away. I missed but definitely heard about Canada's 18-0 win over Slovakia. I saw the US's 12-1 win over China. I watched most of Canada's 10-1 win over Switzerland. And then I saw all the critiques . (And there were indeed more than three.) It is indeed worrisome given that the IOC nixed softball from the Olympic roster because of lack of international worthiness. (Though that seemed to become the official rationale there was all that curious wrangling that is alleged to have happened over whether baseball and softball were the same sport.) And if I were an elite female ski jumper right now seeing these scores, I would be miffed that the IOC hadn't even considered my sport because of alleged international shallowness. But the delve into Olympic hockey's history is important. The men's scores in the early years of the game--even worse. And the women's game needs to overcome even more: namely the sexism and intersecti...

Initially when I read this column at the Huffington Post by Michele Morris about the story of the missing female ski jumpers in Vancouver, I had another one of those where have you been moments. It's a good column that outlines the whole contentious history of the women's exclusion from the Olympic games. It offers those late to the issue, a quick and thoughtful catch-up. But I was still annoyed at the media coverage this late in the game. But then as I was watching jumping events this past weekend and heard nary a word about the lack of women, I kind of softened my stance. If they are not going to talk about it during the actual Olympics on the many stations of NBC maybe we do still need writers like Morris to be bringing up this issue. Then today I got irked again as I read about people so outraged they are boycotting the Olympics because of it. Really? I have been pleased to see a lot of controversy and protesting of these games, but you're picking this issue--NOW--to bo...

I am sitting here watching the US women's hockey team cream China. It's 5-0 at the end of the first period and China has only had one shot on goal. Four-time Olympian Angela Ruggiero scored the first goal. It was a pretty offensive-looking move for a defense person (that's right, Cammi Granato--she's a woman!). She just skated right in and slipped it around the goalie down low. Anyway here's a profile of Ruggiero from the NYTimes that highlights her charity work over the year. And thankfully leaves out her stint on that Donald Trump show. Ruggiero was the intermission interview and I have to say she looked a lot like a softball player: lots of eye make-up. I mean mascara that you could see clumping. So she's wearing a helmet most of the time but she put on the eyeliner for the intermission interview?

Because if Lindsey Vonn had a plan to gain Michael Phelps-like fame by winning many medals and becoming a highly decorated American skier, she might have to fall back on her modeling career. I refrained from commenting on the little upsurge in controversy after my colleague dared to suggest that the pose of Vonn on a recent SI cover, the one with her ass in the air and perfectly coiffed hair and impeccable make-up superimposed on a mountain, was slightly problematic. Though I was tempted to comment on how ugly the response to something that was nothing new: people including Dr. LaVoi and myself and many others have been noting the problematic ways in which female athletes are depicted for a long, long time. Luckily she and others addressed the sexist, homophobic responses. So now we can all move on and think about Vonn's latest SI appearance: the photos of her in the annual swimsuit issue. There's no question that these are indeed sexual pictures; there is no question of in...

The women ski jumpers may have lost their bid to gain entry into the Vancouver Olympics (as recounted in this article which I thought tried too hard to put a positive spin on the sexism) but the 2-women bobsled team from Australia is in! The Court of Arbitration of Sport ruled that the Australians were unfairly denied access as the best team from Oceania based on current bodsled federation rules for qualifying. That means 21 teams will be competing in Vancouver next week instead of the usual 20, which is good news for the Irish team which was the last to qualify.

...the female ski jumpers who will not be there, of course, because the IOC's decision to keep ski jumping the only male-only winter sport kept being upheld by varying governing and judicial bodies. I was thinking yesterday when skiing in Vermont about watching my first (and only admittedly) ski jumping competition in Brattleboro last winter. So I was pleased to come across this article out of Rutland, VT about a local female jumper (who was actually at the competition last year). It chronicle's the 16-year old's history in the sport. She was US junior Olympian and, of course, hoping for the inclusion of her sport in the games in Vancouver. But unlike jumpers like Lindsay Van, Vermont native Tara Geraghty-Moats is likely young enough to compete in four years at the next Olympics on Sochi. (This is assuming of course that the IOC has had enough of the negative press and actually includes the sport in 2014.) Geraghty-Moats actually won't be in Brattleboro next month becau...

On December 22 the Canadian Supreme Court refused to hear the case of female ski jumpers trying to get into the 2010 Olympics. This was the last ditch effort of the group which has pursued legal means and made appeals to the IOC, including a letter to President Jacques Rogge--who refused to grant the group's request for a meeting. I was pleased to see that South African runner Caster Semenya has not faded away after speculations about her gender and intense invasions of privacy. Instead she is fighting back-- with a lawsuit against IAAF and Athletic South Africa (ASA) for leaking information about the gender testing. The bungling of her case has also resulted in the president and board of the ASA to step down. It appears that testing began before Semenya went to Berlin for the World Championships and that ASA president Leonard Cheune decided to send her anyway because results were not yet in. But, as we know, questions were raised and information that should have stayed private was...

To Kacey Bellamy the only UNHer to make the US National Women's Hockey Team. (She's also a western MA native so yea!) I have to admit I was a little peeved that, after Ben Smith retired after Turino and suggested having a female head coach, USA Hockey went with Marc Johnson of Wisconsin. But after reading this column , I was somewhat appeased.

So remember when everyone was all "boo hiss China"? They were about to host the Olympics and a lot of Americans got their retro commie high horses to talk about--well mostly how great the West and free speech and capitalism are. And granted there were a lot of problems worthy of critique like Darfur and the displacement of people and killing of animals and arrests of dissidents, etc. But those critiques, as I recall, were pretty free-flowing. Sure a lot of athletes took their problematic Switzerland stand but there was discourse at all levels really. So here we are, two years later and everything is all rosy for Vancouver in a couple of months, right? Yeah, not so much. Apparently the whole "the West is a bastion of freedom and democracy" is crap when it comes to hosting the Olympic Games. Amy Goodman, author and journalist and current host of Democracy Now was detained at the US/Canadian border when she went to Vancouver to give a talk about US health care and th...

It's the day after American Thanksgiving and you know what that means... Time to talk luge. (What? Did you think I was really going to go the mall on Black Friday?) When I was in Canada a few weeks ago commercials for the Olympics were everywhere. Not so much here, but we should be getting excited at this point, especially if you are into luge. Because according to this piece , American women's luge could be an up-and-coming spoiler for all those veteran European teams like Germany where school children allegedly have easy access to the country's luge tracks. But to all my friends in their 30s who still harbor luge dreams, forget it. It's a youngsters' sport, at least here in the US. Apparently the average age of the US National Team is 21. Which makes sense; you have to have a certain teenage immortality attitude to shoot down a sloped ice track on your back, on a sled with sharp blades using only your feet to steer. More power to them! Hope they make a showing in...

The IOC has stated that , in the wake of the Canadian appeal's court decision to uphold the lower court decision, it is pleased that it can now move on and focus on the forthcoming games. Yes, it must be nice when a legal entity says it cannot hold you responsible for discrimination. The IOC sure knows how to spin things. I was a little surprised by this statement from the organization: "As the lower court noted, the IOC has continued to demonstrate by its actions its support for women athletes and their participation in the Olympic Games." Hmmm....I didn't read the lower court decision, but the message I got out of it from all the coverage was not that the IOC was a great supporter of women's sports, but that it was a great discriminator and the judge regretted that it was beyond her power to hold them accountable.

The appeal, filed by a group of female ski jumpers attempting to get their sport into the Vancouver Games, was dismissed after two days of hearings in a Canadian court of appeals this week. The court agreed with the lower court ruling that it was the IOC that was at fault and the IOC can not be held to Canadian law. [I am not a legal scholar, and certainly not a Canadian legal scholar, but this decision would seem to set a bad precedent. They do have precedent in Canada right? I mean who knows what kind of outside entity can come in and shirk Canadian law.] The lawsuit, according to VANOC, which seems a little resentful for being involved in this at all, cost the organization "six figures." First, if they were so resentful, they should have put more pressure on the IOC to do the right thing, to take responsibility, etc. But it seems the IOC gets to be immune to all these things. They must believe that because they are in Switzerland, they are neutral. Second, how much exactly...

In my ongoing effort to offer some support for the women (and men) who continue to fight for women's ski jumping in the Vancouver Olympics (less than 100 days away now) I direct you to this article from the Christian Science Monitor . It is quite thorough and lays out all the issues to date and going forward.

Well they put it much more politely, of course. But here is the letter by female ski jumpers basically asking for explicit answers as to why they have been excluded from the forthcoming winter Olympics. In addition to citing the human rights laws of Canada--the ground they attempted to stand on in a recent lawsuit--they also cite the IOC's statement that the sport had not met the technical merit criteria. They are asking what constitutes technical merit, citing a journalist's earlier assessment of the lack of technical merit--under IOC standards--of women's pole vaulting as compared to ski jumping. Given the clearly subjective nature of technical merit, I am not guessing the women, and the rest of us who support their cause, are going to be getting any satisfactory answers any time soon.