When she was 10, Katie Willis and her ski-jumping teammates travelled to a training camp in Utah, where they sailed off an Olympic-sized jump for the first time.
She was the only girl on the team of nine young athletes, but coaches had a lofty goal for them all: They called them the 2010 Team.
Seven years later, two of Ms. Willis's male teammates have qualified for the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver. And Ms. Willis, now one of Canada's top female ski jumpers, has joined a landmark court challenge for her right to do the same.
The case was launched in B.C.'s Supreme Court this week, pitting those who accuse Olympic organizers of violating the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by excluding female ski jumpers against others who say the sport's female division didn't meet certain qualification criteria in effect at the time of the International Olympic Committee's 2006 decision.
In conversation with The Globe and Mail, Ms. Willis describes how it felt to take that first giant leap in Utah - and why she, like so many female ski jumpers around the world, is addicted to big air.
We had to take the chairlift up, and just going up that last little bit was so scary. As I walked over to the jump, my heart was going faster and faster. I looked down the jump and it was longer than the ones I was used to. I just couldn't breathe!
I saw the wind flags blowing, and saw my coach and everyone else. At the bottom, they're just little tiny ants. Your coach is a little bigger because he's at the end of the takeoff. You can't see all of the landing area. When you see people jump ahead of you, just see their bodies fly up and they disappear for a couple seconds and they come out the bottom.
I could feel the excitement and anxiety around me, because it was me and my teammates' first jumps on a big hill. I put my skis down, and I had to breathe out and try [to] let the nerves out.
I clipped in my bindings and I slipped onto the bar. I looked down, the clock ticked down, and [my coach] flagged me.
I just hesitated on the bar. But then I let it go. I started speeding up and got faster and faster and faster. I could feel the wind on my face. I had to react, right there, and just jump.
When you have that perfect jump it just feels like everything is going in slow-mo. If I get the perfect takeoff, I feel like I get rocketed up high into the sky, and my skis come beside me so nicely and I just slowly float down.
Everyone says the same thing. There's a feeling of getting high and just flying. It's just crazy and it's just so thrilling.
Sometimes your jumps are bad if you're thinking of something else before takeoff. I've fallen a couple of times. When you're older you kind of know what to do in certain conditions. Sometimes when there's too much wind it's a little nerve-racking. Gusts can take you up and down.
[During the Utah jump] I had the feeling of being aggressive, with all that pressure on my skis, and just feeling weightless. Then there's that slow dropping feeling. You can't hear anything around you, it's just you.
The ground was slowly getting closer. And I felt that landing and then this burst of excitement that I survived my first jump on a big hill. I couldn't wait to get back up there.
