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'I thought maybe I would find out how it felt to fly."

Katie Willis, the 16-year-old athlete who has become the Jump Girl in the debate over whether female ski jumpers will be allowed to compete in the 2010 Winter Olympics, is on the phone from the family home in Calgary.

In between taking calls on another line and returning to the conversation with a sing-songy and polite apology for the interruption, she is describing her initial fascination with the sport that has dominated half of her young life.

"I was eight years old, and my mom signed me up for a camp in the summer, and they had a whole bunch of sports, biking and stuff, and ski jumping," she explains. "I didn't realize it was scary. It was so thrilling."

In the summer, jumpers ski down a track of wet ceramic tiles instead of snow, "and the landing is in this area with millions of plastic straws," she reports with a laugh.

By the end of the weeklong camp at Canada Olympic Park in Calgary, she felt committed to jumping. "Every other sport bored me," she says, listing off others she excelled at, including swimming, soccer and gymnastics. "This was something I could see myself continuing. I remember running to the car after the first time I tried it to tell my mom how exciting it was."

Her mother, Jan, who is a nurse, remembers coming to pick her up that day. "She was jumping up and down, and when she told me about ski jumping, my heart was going, 'What?' Initially, there was disbelief. ... I couldn't imagine it," she says on the phone in a later interview.

"But then there was relief in a way because she had found a sport she loved. Katie was a daredevil, jumping and climbing up things, from the time she was two years old. It's pretty scary seeing her go off the jumps, but I see the joy, too. And, you know, you just have to go with it as a

parent."

During her summer camp introduction to ski jumping, a coach immediately identified the young girl as having potential, and she soon got involved in year-round training. "Me and eight guys," the younger Ms. Willis says.

As she progressed in the sport, graduating to bigger jumps, she often felt scared, she acknowledges. A few years ago, she had a big crash, she adds matter-of-factly. "I broke my shoulder blade." Was that her first accident? "Oh no, I had little ones, like, I would get a little bit of a concussion."

Did injuries ever cause her to question if she should continue? "No way," she responds brightly. "I would be back on the hill, wanting to be better so it wouldn't happen again."

Currently in Grade 11, she entered Calgary's National Sport School last year. The high school, designed to accommodate the training and travel schedule of elite athletes, was founded in 1994 by the Calgary Olympic Development Association and the Calgary Board of Education.

"You learn how to prioritize," Ms. Willis explains of her education and sports training. "The teachers are flexible and there's a lot of

independent learning."

Asked if she's a good student, she doesn't hesitate to answer, "Oh, I think so. I was the smartest in my class in Grade 10." She received two scholarships to attend the school, one for athletic excellence and the other for academic achievement.

In the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, 20 Canadian competitors were former or current students of the school.

Ms. Willis' current training schedule includes ski jumping in the morning - she rises at 5 a.m. to get to the facility by 6:45 - followed by school and, in the afternoon, training in a gym with weights.

Attempts to initiate international competitions for female ski jumping in order for the sport to qualify for Olympic inclusion began in 2003.

A sport must have held at least two World Championships to be considered developed enough for Olympic competition.

In 2003, the Canadian Snowsports Association made a proposal to the Fédération Internationale de Ski that female ski jumpers be included in the world ski-jumping championships. The response was the creation of an FIS Continental Cup circuit, one notch below a world championship, and currently the highest level of competition for senior female ski jumpers. In 2005, the CSA and a Norwegian ski association made another proposal to the FIS, resulting in the world junior ski-jumping championships.

The first women's (or

senior) ski-jumping world championships will be held next year in Liberec, Czech Republic.

Katie Willis has performed well in the Continental Cup circuit and in the world junior ski-jumping championships.

At 14, she made history at a Continental Cup competition in Klingenthal, Germany, as the youngest athlete and the first Canadian female to win a gold. Many of her competitors at the international ski-jumping event were a decade older.

Last year in Tarvisio, Italy, she came second in the world junior competition. She is ranked seventh in the world.

In 2006, the International Olympic Committee voted not to include women's ski jumping in the 2010 Games in Vancouver, which was a bitter blow to the athletes and their supporters. They cited examples of other sports that had been included in the Olympics without meeting the criterion of having at least two world championships.

"It was everyone's idea," Katie Willis explains of the decision, led by her mother, to file a human-rights complaint of sexual discrimination.

"We had done everything we could. We had written letters to our MPs. We tried to get the public aware of the problem. But it wasn't enough. All the parents talked about what we could do next."

The federal government recently committed itself to taking up the discussion with IOC officials in Vancouver next month. The IOC, meanwhile, seems to be digging in its heels in support of the earlier ruling. In a statement last week, the committee reiterated its concerns over technical criteria, adding, "Any reference to the fact that this is a matter about gender equality is totally inappropriate and misleading."

For Katie Willis, the goal of jumping in the Olympics is a natural expression of her competitive spirit. "I want the next level," she says. "It's the end of the rainbow. It's what every athlete strives for."

It was not Katie's frustration that prompted her mother, along with father Ken, an engineer, to seek the intervention of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. "They love this sport," the senior Ms. Willis explains. "I don't sense frustration. They are not letting anything stop them. As with any sport at this level, they live, breathe and eat it. And that's why, in my heart, I needed to fight to get them to the Olympics."

The young women are not dwelling on the disappointment that potentially awaits them, she says. As a mother, she is simply doing what any parent would - trying to protect them from what she perceives could happen. "It will hit them hard in 2010 to watch [only] men compete in the ski jumping when they have worked so hard."

shampson@globeandmail.com