News

A group of international athletes, including some of the top women ski jumpers in the world, is going to court in British Columbia to force women's ski jumping onto the roster of official events at the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Deedee Corradini, president of Women's Ski Jumping USA and a former mayor of Salt Lake City, said yesterday that the petitioners include four highly rated ski jumpers from Europe, three from the United States and Marie-Pierre Morin, a former Canadian champion in the event.

“I expect their lawsuit will be filed in B.C. Supreme Court late tomorrow [Wednesday]. It's a major action,” said Ms. Corradini, who has been in the forefront of the high-profile campaign to overturn the controversial decision by the International Olympic Committee to leave women's ski jumping out of the 2010 Games here.

Ms. Corradini declined to provide details of the suit, saying “finishing touches” to the statement of claim were still being worked on.

But sources indicated that the petition is being filed against the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympics and alleges that banning women jumpers from the Games violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

VANOC is being targeted despite the fact that local organizers have no decision-making authority over which events are on the Games agenda. The matter is solely for the IOC to determine, and IOC president Jacques Rogge has so far strongly resisted all suggestions that the issue be revisited.

Ms. Corradini said VANOC is being sued because it is the B.C.-based representatives of the IOC. “But I'm not sure of all the legal ins and outs.”

Ski jumping, a part of the Games since 1924, is the only Olympic event closed to women. The IOC has argued that there are not enough top-calibre women ski jumpers to warrant inclusion.

But Ms. Corradini said there are double the number of women ski jumpers competing internationally as in the popular ski-cross men's and women's events, which the IOC added to the 2010 Games.

The controversy has been a cause célèbre for those, including Canadian women ski jumpers, who charge that banning women from the Olympic hill during the Games amounts to discrimination.

A complaint the ski jumpers filed with the Canadian Human Rights Commission was dropped only recently, in return for a federal government promise to press the IOC to change its mind.

At the same time, the issue has been a headache for the IOC and its well-known former vice-president from Montreal, Dick Pound, who has said turning the furor into a human-rights case is "a huge and hideous mistake."

Even if the court case fails, Ms. Corradini vowed that she and other supporters intend to continue fighting to have women ski jumpers at the Winter Olympics until the Games themselves begin in February, 2010.

“We are not going to let this issue die,” she said. “It's the right thing to do, and once you're convinced that something is right, you don't give up. I think this is going to be a major issue at the Games. It's not going away.”

Current Canadian women ski jumpers are not part of the lawsuit.

Jumper Katie Willis told CTV News that they are still hopeful the federal secretary of sport, Helena Guergis, will convince the IOC to change its mind.

“I still have a lot of hope,” Ms. Willis said. “I met with Helena and she seemed really eager, and she was going to go over there, and she was going to talk to him [Mr. Rogge].”

Ms. Corradini, who was mayor of Salt Lake when the city won the bid to stage the 2002 Winter Games, said she was shocked when she first learned that women's ski jumping was not part of the Olympics.

“I just thought that was wrong. It needs to be righted,” she declared, adding that advocates for the women jumpers are asking for only one event, while male jumpers will have three separate competitions on the massive ski hills built near Whistler for the Games.

Among the plaintiffs in the pending legal fight are U.S. women's ski champion Lindsey Van, “the number one ski jumper in the world,” according to Ms. Corradini.

She said she and Ms. Van will be in Vancouver Thursday for a press conference in support of the jumpers' B.C. Supreme Court case.

Ms. Corradini said legal and other costs of the campaign are being donated by supporters of the women ski jumpers.