Women’s ski jumping still faces uphill battle ahead of third Olympics

A new mixed team competition will expand opportunities for women ski jumpers to compete at the Winter Olympics, but eight years after the women’s event was added, athletes are still scratching their heads over the vast disparities that exist between the women’s and men’s programs.

“It’s eight years later; let’s step some stuff up and get some more equality,” American ski jumper Anna Hoffmann recently told the Wisconsin State Journal. “The women’s side of the sport has been showing that our level and our competitiveness is there. There are so many athletes that are super capable. There’s no reason to have discriminations between the two.”

Chief among those discrepancies is the 40 spots allowed for for the women’s individual normal hill event compared to 65 for the men’s. Additionally, the men have an individual large hill competition (another shot at gold for 65 men) – despite the fact that women compete on the large hill on the World Cup and at Nordic Skiing World Championships. There’s also a men’s team event where 12 countries compete with four-man teams (and another 12 men take home Olympic medals).

The 21-year-old Hoffman personally felt the crunch of the numbers. She was originally sixth on the alternate list for Beijing but made it in after other countries passed on using some quota spots. After qualifying three women for both the 2014 and 2018 Games (the max quota is four), the U.S. did not initially qualify a single spot in the women’s ski jumping competition for 2022.

Norwegian jumper Silje Opseth, 22, said recently she was envious of the men getting to use “the big, beautiful hill” in Beijing, and on Thursday several  Norway team members shared their support.

“There is no doubt that they are ready for a large