Athletes, advocates celebrating steps towards gender equality at Milano-Cortina Olympics

The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics will be the most gender-balanced Olympic Winter Games in history, a feat being celebrated by Canada's sports organizations and Olympians.

Women are set to make up 47 per cent of the athletes on a program with 50 women's events — both Olympic Winter Games records.

Canada's 206-member team in Italy includes 107 female athletes.

A spokesperson for the International Olympic Committee said in an email that 12 of the 16 disciplines on the program will feature full gender parity, another Olympic first.

"This shows the International Olympic Committee's continued commitment to fostering gender equality in sport," the spokesperson said, adding that the full and exact gender breakdown will only be available after the Games are over.

The Games will feature four new women's events. They include freestyle skiing's dual moguls, luge doubles, ski jumping's large individual hill and ski mountaineering sprint.

Women and men are also set to compete over the same distances in cross-country skiing for the first time.

Lauren Gale, two-time Olympian and Canadian record holder in the indoor 200-metre sprint, told The Canadian Press that improving gender equality shows people "the best of the best of both genders."

"Knowing that we have the chance to compete and have the world value both performances equally is an amazing feeling," said Gale.

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Gale, who competed at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, which was the first Olympic Games in history to achieve numerical gender parity, said it was "an honour" being part of history.

"It feels extremely special to be a part of a team that so many athletes before us worked so hard to create," said Gale. "It's