A new mixed team competition will expand opportunities for female ski jumpers to compete in the Winter Olympics, but eight years after the women’s event was added, athletes are still scratching their heads over the vast disparities that exist between women’s and men’s programs.
“It’s eight years later; let’s move on and get a little more equality,” American ski jumper Anna Hoffman recently told the Wisconsin State Journal. “The women’s side of the sport has shown that our level and our competitiveness are there. There are so many athletes who are super capable. There is no reason to discriminate between the two.
The main one of these differences is the 40 places granted for the individual women’s event on the normal hill against 65 for the men. In addition, the men have an individual competition on the large hill (another chance to get gold for 65 men) – despite women competing on the large hill at the World Cup and World Nordic Skiing Championships. There is also a men’s team event where 12 countries compete with four-man teams (and another 12 men win Olympic medals).
Hoffman, 21, has personally felt the tightening numbers. She was originally sixth on the alternate list for Beijing, but made it after other countries moved on using quota places. After qualifying three women for the 2014 and 2018 Games (the maximum quota is four), the United States initially did not qualify a single spot in the women’s ski jumping competition for 2022.
norwegian sweater Silje Opseth22, recently said she envies the men who used “the big beautiful hill” in Beijing, and on Thursday several members of the Norway team shared their support.
“There is no doubt that they are ready for a big hill in the Olympic program,” said fellow jumper Halvor Egner Granerudaccording to EuroSport.
Norway coach Clas Brede Brathen pointed out that the men and women competed on the same large hill at a World Cup in Willingen, Germany last weekend.
“It will be hard work for those arguing against girls jumping all the tracks after what happened in Willingen,” he said. “There the girls showed what many of us have been saying for a long time, that they will show it when they get the chance.”
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An NPR report released Thursday details other inequalities female ski jumpers face, including winning roughly 75% less prize money than men and a bizarre, now-defunct requirement that required women to include signs extra hips in their ski suits. The International Ski Federation (FIS) had claimed the panels were suitable, but the two-time US Olympic ski jumper Sarah Hendrickson believes that everything was aesthetic.
“They were trying to find ways to accentuate our hips and curves a little more,” Hendrickson told NPR.
The FIS scrapped the requirements in 2020, saying the change made it easier to sew and modify suits.
There is also the fact that women still do not compete in Nordic combined, the only Olympic sport – summer or winter – reserved for men.
While Nordic Combined is contested separately from Ski Jumping, since Nordic Combined includes both Ski Jumping and Cross-Country Skiing, it was speculated that a Women’s Nordic Combined event would be added after the debut. women’s ski jumping in 2014.
Originally, the women’s Nordic combined was aimed at the Beijing Winter Games in 2022, but when the official Olympic program was unveiled, there was no women’s event.
“The Nordic combined, and the women’s in particular, still needs to be developed in terms of universality [the number of countries with Olympic-caliber athletes]in terms of the level of the athletes”, IOC Sports Director Kit McConnell said in 2018.
Who is the favorite to win the women’s ski jump in Beijing?
There will be no repeat gold medalist in women’s ski jumping after the reigning Olympic champion Maren Lundby chose not to compete last season. The two-time world champion said she was not ready to “sacrifice everything” to meet the demands of her sport.
“Ski jumping is a sport with a lot of demands, weight is one of them,” she told Norwegian television NRK in October. “My body has changed naturally lately and for this reason I don’t want to sacrifice everything to be at the best level in Beijing.”
Lundby has since sparked a conversation about eating disorders in his sport, advocating for young athletes “not to make stupid decisions and suffer”.
austria Sara Marita Kramer was considered a medal favorite ahead of the Games, but was forced to withdraw on Wednesday after testing positive for COVID-19.
from Japan Sara Takanashi arrives in Beijing as the most successful women’s ski jumper in history, having recorded 61 victories and 110 overall podiums in 167 World Cup starts. Yet in two previous Olympic appearances his best result was bronze in PyeongChang, and in six world championships his best was silver in 2013 and bronze in 2017 and 2021.
Slovenia Ursa Bogataj will make her second Olympic appearance after finishing 30th in 2018, but is riding the momentum of a podium-filled season after finishing second twice and third three times in nine World Cup starts.
Like Bogataj, Germany Katharina Althaus comes with five podiums in nine World Cup starts. She is also a reigning Olympic silver medalist and reigning world champion. A podium in Beijing would make Althaus the first woman to win two Olympic medals in ski jumping.
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What is the mixed team ski jumping event?
Twelve teams of four – two men and two women – will compete in the first mixed team event, which features two scored runs and is held on the normal hill. Starting with the women, the genders alternate jumps until all four athletes from each team have competed. Each team’s four scores are combined after the first round and the top eight teams advance to the final round.
Germany have won the mixed event at the last four world championships, with Austria finishing second in 2019 and third in 2021. Expect the Germans to be represented by Karl Geiger and Markus Eisenbichler, both ranked in the top six of the World Cup and part of the last two teams in the World Championship. Althaus is probably for one of the female spots with Pauline Hesler capable of satisfying the other.
Austrians have depth with Jan Hoerl, Stefan Kraft and Daniel Huber all have won the World Cup this year, while on the women’s side they will choose from the 2014 Olympic silver medalist Daniela Iraschko-Stolzworld medalists Eva Pinkelnig and Jacqueline Seifriedsberger.
With only one American qualified for Beijing in the individual event, the American team is unable to compete in the mixed team event.
2022 Winter Olympics: women’s ski jumping, mixed team schedule
| Event | Date/Time (US Eastern Time) | Date/Time (Beijing, China) |
| Women’s individual normal hill (first round, final) | 02/05/22 05:45 | 02/05/22 18:45 |
| Mixed team normal hill (first round, final) | 02/07/22 06:45 | 07/02/22 19:45 |
MORE ON HER TURF: 2022 Winter Olympics schedule – How to watch every women’s event
Publisher on its territory Alex Azzi and the NBC Olympics research team contributed to this report.
