For the fifteen female ski jumpers petitioning to beincluded in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver

Despite the glory of colour it’s easy to be the butterfly;

It’s hard to be thedog or to remain like the river stone.

For Christ sakelittle lady, sit down you’ve been told.

Because he thought that a woman short of breath was anaffront to good

    manners,

Baron Pierre deCoubertin founded the modern Olympics with only the

    strength

of men in mind. Theheft and depth of sport surely could not be good

for the reproductiveorgans of a lady—

                                                         In 1896 at the first modern Olympics,

Stamata Revithiwatched the men’s marathon and the next day started

    out

on her own forty-kilometre run. She could not enter thestadium to

    finish,

as the men had done the previous day, so with one lap aroundthe entire

    stadium

she finished the run that was thought impossible for a womanto

    complete.

The most unaesthetic sight the human eye could contemplate,de

    Coubertin said,

was women’s sport. In1922 Alice Milliat held a women’s Olympics

in Paris whereeighteen women broke world records in sport.

De Coubertin demandedthat Milliat drop the Olympic moniker from her

    games.

She refused until heagreed to integrate ten women’s events into the

    Olympics.

Milliat dropped theOlympic moniker from her games but de Coubertin

only added five female track-and-field events to the 1928Olympics in

    Amsterdam.

For the 1928 games the Canadian women’s Olympic teampracticed

for the Olympic relay by passing the baton on the deck ofthe ship

that sailed them to Europe. At the same time a contingent ofCanadian

    men

travelled to Amsterdam to petition the IOC to do the rightthing

and drop female sport from the Olympics. The media called

the Canadian women’s team the Matchless Six for theirathletic ability.

The New York Times called one of them, EthelCatherwood, “the

    prettiest girl

of the games.” She became known as the Saskatoon Lily, forher

    “flower-like face.”

Surely, it was said,the Saskatoon Lily would become a movie star,

but Catherwood was anathlete. She said she would rather gulp poison

than try her hand atmotion pictures. She won gold in the high jump

and remains the onlyCanadian woman to win a solo gold in track and

    field.

That same year the women ran the 800 metre race so hard thatthey crossed

the finish line and fell to the ground to catch theirbreath.

                                                                                     The men of the IOC

found this disquieting. The 800 meter women’s race was notreinstated

until 1968 in Mexico, where Enriqueta Basilio became thefirst woman

to light the Olympic cauldron.

Eva Dawes was a weak child and her father thought exercise

would strengthen her.He built her a high-jumping pit

at her school. At atrack meet in 1926 she won two gold medals

in the under-18category. The officials then refused to let her jump

with the adults untilher father walked onto the pitch,

grabbed themicrophone and pleaded with the crowd to intervene.

The officials letDawes jump again and she won another gold that day.

In 1935 she wanted to see life outside of Ontario

so she accepted aninvitation to travel to the Soviet Union.

When she returned shewas suspended from amateur sport

for cavorting withcommunists. The next year she boycotted

the Nazi-hostedOlympic Games and sailed for Barcelona

to compete in thePeople’s Olympiad, championed

by trade unions,socialists and communists, then cancelled

with the first shotsof the Spanish Civil War.

The athlete Fanny Blankers-Koen gave birth to her secondchild,

immediately startedtraining, and six weeks later competed

in the 1946 EuropeanChampionships. By 1948 she was back

in shape and heldmany world records, but still the media thought

she was too old torepresent her country and that she should stay home

to take care of herchildren. She won four gold medals at the 1948

    Olympics

They called her TheFlying Housewife.

In 1973 the former Wimbledon singles champion Bobby Riggs

claimed that women didn’t have the strength to play tennisproperly

and that he would beat any woman alive

                                                                      by virtue of his manhood.

He beat Margaret Court on Mother’s Day of that year.

                                                                       He said, “I want Billie Jean King.

I want the women’s lib leader!” He wore a “Men’s Liberation”T-shirt to

    practise

for his match with King and said that he wanted to be thenumber one

    chauvinist pig.

The tennis player Rosie Casals called Riggs “an old man whowalks like a

    duck,

can’t see, can’t hear and besides,” she said, “he’s anidiot.”

A team of football players carried Billie Jean King

into the Astrodomewhile Bobby Riggs rode in

on a chariot pulledby women. Billie Jean King beat him

three straight setsin a row.

Listen: here they come again, trying to screw things up forthe men. In

    2005

the president of theInternational Ski Federation, Gian Franco Kasper,

    said

“Ski jumping is justtoo dangerous for women. It’s not appropriate for

    ladies

from a medical pointof view.”

The chivalry playbook? For the Continental Cup in Germanythe men’s

ski jumping teamslept in a hotel while the women were billeted

in a farmhouse andbarn, with a pile of manure outside their window,

and awoke to a farmcat eating their food. Or they slept in a post office

in St. Moritz, andunder a dining room table in Trondheim.

It is easy to be the butterfly. It is hard to sleep in thebarn.

Perhaps your breasts are not aerodynamic.

Perhaps jumpsuitswill increase the popularity of your sport.

“Come here littledarling, and I’ll teach you how to spread your V-style

    wider.”

At the top of the cantilevered tower you envision yourselfin flight

and prepare your bodyto react without thought. You tighten the straps

of your helmet,position your goggles, slide onto the starting bar

to watch the windwork the flags with the possibility of flight

as you slide yourfeet ahead in the track, fold down

and zip into theinrun—you feel the compression

of the curve. You areover the knoll.

                                                        If you bend your knees you lose control.

You master theairfoil and steer with the slightest movement of your

    hands.

You look straightahead and command every turn and nuance of posture.

You are flying. Thereis no other explanation.

Your body is muscleand memory held up by the wind.

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