Sporting Madness

It is a shame that the International Olympic Committee, the Vancouver Organizing Committee and the Canadian courts have denied female ski jumpers the chance to compete in the Olympics. In this day and age, it's ridiculous to hold a men-only Olympic event, especially when you've previously waived all the procedural and competitive elements you're citing as reasons. However, it's important to keep this in perspective; at the end of the day, it's a small number of people who don't have the chance to compete in one athletic competition. It's sad, but it's not a horrible tragedy. Thus, you probably shouldn't be comparing it to Hitler's treatment of Jews , especially if you're a prominent Jewish organization (talking to you, B'nai Brith Canada!). Here's the offending passage in a B'nai Brith press release sent out Monday, as quoted by the National Post 's Jonathan Kay (who called the organization to ensure this wasn't a ...

The International Olympic Committee continued their long history of dubious decisions last Thursday, when president Jacques Rogge made the brilliant comment that including women's ski jumping would dilute the value of an Olympic medal . "If you have three medals, with 80 athletes competing on a regular basis internationally, the percentage of medal winners is extremely high," Rogge said. "In any other sport you are speaking about hundreds of thousands, if not tens of millions of athletes, at a very high level, competing for one single medal. We do not want the medals to be diluted and watered down. That is the bottom line." You'd think the head of the IOC would be compelled to educate himself on the sports his organization offers, at least. Most Winter Olympics sports have nowhere near the hundreds of thousands of athletes Rogge so glibly mentions competing. Consider ski cross, a much newer sport that the IOC has deigned to include . According to the Globe a...