Comments on: Nordic Combined

Question: Nordic Combined

Protocols of the Elders of Awesome — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 09:13:38 -0800

Olympic Nordic Combined skiing is male-only. Isn't this against the Olympic Charter? Do women want to compete? Is the sport being promoted to women? What would happen if a woman applied to compete?

By: insomnus

insomnus — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 09:33:56 -0800

The same goes for ski-jumping. For a woman to apply to compete, she would have to meet the same requirements as the men competing and for a women's category to open, there would have to be enough interest. Which just isn't true. An example of this is Olympic Skeet. Chinese woman by the name of Shan Zhan won the gold medal in 1992, upsetting the men a bit and women were not allowed to shoot in the 1996 olympics. From 2000 onwards, there has been a women's Olympic Skeet event.

BTW: Ze Germans definitely sabotaged Manninen's skis for the cross-country part of the combined event. FUCK. GODDAMMIT. ROBBED.)

By: occhiblu

occhiblu — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 09:39:14 -0800

Salon's Broadsheet actually addressed this a bit recently.

By: insomnus

insomnus — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 09:42:06 -0800

And actually, it's not as simple as that. While the charter vaguely mentions that discrimination by gender is not allowed, the individual sports are actually covered under their respective federations which might or might not allow mixed events And anyways, I am not an IANAIOCM, so I'm just guessing, you're probably best off ignoring me altogether.

By: gemmy

gemmy — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 13:20:37 -0800

Nordic Combined is ski jumping and cross country together. If there is no ski jumping competition for women, that would rule out the Nordic Combined too.

I was under the impression that the reason there is no women's ski jumping is because the interest just isn't there to have a strong enough international organization for that particular sport.

Seems to me that the women would be better off trying to convince the international organization for ski jumping to allow mixed competitions.

By: vanoakenfold

vanoakenfold — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 13:37:55 -0800

It doesn't seem like "enough interest" is a plausible excuse -- just have the one or two women who want to compete, compete with the men for the same medal. All you need are three entrants, though, don't you, for a bronze/silver/gold? Wouldn't you just have to find 3 women in the entire world (surely, not that difficult) who would want to do a ski jump just to try, and the 3rd woman get bronze by default?

By: gemmy

gemmy — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 13:58:09 -0800

But vanoakenfold, if you were going to just "find 3 women in the entire world... who would want to do a ski jump just to try", what about the other sports out there that aren't represented at the Olympics? It takes a long, hard fight to get your sport into the competition, it's not as easy as adding one just because a small group of people thinks that it should be added.

I still think mixed competition is the way to go, the way it should be for many other sports out there, IMHO.

By: easternblot

easternblot — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 14:45:37 -0800

Somewhat unrelated, but they have approved male synchronized swimming a while ago (old link, 2000). In that case they had an obvious strong competitor in the field who just happened to be male. If there is a really good female Nordic Combined competitor who regularly competes at non-regulated events and always ends in medal positions, that would probably be enough drive to have it approved.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 20:44:23 -0800

According to nbcolympics.com, Nordic Combined (as well as doubles luge) are not limited to men only--either men or women may compete, but no women ever have. Ski jumping appears to be men-only, not just de facto but de jure as well.

By: vanoakenfold

vanoakenfold — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 07:01:39 -0800

Well, the three women anywhere was to justify the not enough interest excuse, not necessarily the "right" to have one's sport represented, otherwise we'd have a whole host of guiness-world-record-like nonsense going like who can juggle the longest. I think the women aspect would be easier to add in because the sport is already recognized so the track and such is already prepared for without having to go out of the way to build new slopes or whatnot.

I'm not sure if the men-having-generally-more-muscle-mass ideas would let combined events slide so easily, though.