Leap Of Faith

MoJo's Andrea Ruggieri explores why there's no Women's Ski Jumping in the Vancouver Olympics, when they're allowed to compete in pretty much every other event (you know, like Luge. It's safer!)  Alissa Johnson and Jessica Jerome would be on the US Women's team if there was one.  Lindsey Van has the world record jump for any competitor...male or female.  But the last bastion of gender equality in the Olympics remains.

On top of outdated anatomical theories, the athletes also face more quotidian problems, from the lack of financing that means they do most of their fundraising themselves to intimations that they don't work as hard as the men. "On a physical level, we put in just as many hours, on the hill and off," Johnson says. "But I think on an emotional level, we give up a lot more. Our battle doesn't just end on the ski jump."

In fact, it went all the way to the courtroom. Fifteen athletes, including Johnson, Jerome and Van, sued the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC). They argued that they faced gender discrimination. Their judge this summer agreed, but she ruled that it was up to the IOC, not VANOC, to do something about it. So the only way the IOC will add women's ski jumping is if it chooses to. Maybe, Rogge has said, that'll be in 2014—if the ladies are "ready" and their "level of sport" has improved.

Johnson isn't holding her breath. "I can't set myself up for that type of disappointment anymore," she says. And so for a second time, while her brother flies through the air toward his own Olympic hopes, Johnson will remain grounded, unsure even if she should dare to let herself dream of, one day, doing the same.

Like to see this fixed before Sochi, Russia in 2014.  Somehow I think it will be.