If NBC finds itself searching for story lines in Sochi, "the one narrative they can really go for is women's ski jump," says David Wallechinsky, an Olympics historian.
For an Olympic movement desperately seeking to expand women's sports, the resistance to adding women's ski jumping has long been a bit peculiar. Officials said there weren't enough women doing it, and then Gian Franco Kasper, president of the International Ski Federation, came out with this astounding statement in an interview with National Public Radio in 2005:
"Don't forget, it's like jumping down from, let's say, about two meters on the ground about a thousand times a year, which seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view."
Physicians might take issue with the general concept of flinging oneself 300 feet down a hill, but in Sochi, the women are at last set to prove that they can do it with as much panache as the men.
From an American perspective, the event holds the potential for both heartbreak and triumph. The woman at the forefront of the campaign to get women's ski jumping into the Olympics, Lindsey Van, has now been surpassed by other skiers. A medal looks unlikely but would be a thrilling achievement.
Meanwhile, one of the women who has taken Van's place at the top of the sport, Sarah Hendrickson of Salt Lake City, badly injured her knee in August and is now trying to recover in time to go to Sochi.
– Mark Sappenfield, Staff writer
