Alessandro Trovati/AP Photo
The 50th year of Title IX has seen several gender equity ski stories emerge – some good and some bad. FIS cuts women’s Nordic combined for 2026 Olympicsbut also offered to encourage nations to add female coaches to staff in cross-country skiing in addition to legislating equal distances for men and women.
The US Ski Team has led the charge for the advancement of women in snow sports. US Ski and Snowboard has submitted the proposal to add a number of team lesson access bibs for female service personnel only, “with the desire to encourage more national ski federations to invest in training the female staff in the field of cross-country skiing service.”
USA Cross-Country Skiing and Snowboarding Program Director Chris Grover joined Rachel Perkins on Nordic Nation podcast to discuss the proposal as well as the work being done to increase women’s participation in Nordic skiing.
Grover noted that very few women are in coaching positions at World Cup level, and on the technical side, “it’s even fewer.”
“We felt we had to move the needle immediately,” he told Perkins.
The idea for the proposal came from the Gender Equity Task Force, made up of Grover, Aspen Olympian Hailey Swirbul, Matt Whitcomb, Eileen Carey, Ellen Adams and John Farra, which has been around for just over a year.
Initially, the idea of asking nations to allocate a certain percentage of staff positions to women was raised. Grover said “it was fraught with pitfalls,” noting that “it really takes a lot of oversight from the organizers, the FIS, the judging panel to make sure you enter the right way and that you are actually bringing the people you say you are going to bring and they are actually the people on the course.
Additionally, while many countries have women in positions as physiotherapists, massage therapists and doctors, the task force’s goal was to get women trained in a coaching or technician role.
When Grover presented the group’s eventual proposal for bibs for female technicians and coaches, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the FIS had thought along the same lines.
“Which was great,” he told Perkins. “They also recognized the problem.”
It has received universal support, according to Grover, who is fully aware that the proposal will give ski-rich nations like Norway, who are able to hire female staff immediately, another advantage.
“We realized that we were actually in a way, in a strategic competitive way – in terms of access to the course, being able to test more products, being able to help athletes test more skis – we were actually shooting ourselves in the foot with this proposal a bit,” he told Perkins.
“But at the same time, we decided it didn’t matter – it was worth it. We have to push ourselves to be better, we have to push all these countries to be better. If we don’t start now, when are we going to start this process. »
Grover’s team has been scrambling to apply for grants as the arms race for funding becomes even more paramount.
“The idea for us is to bring in women, to develop women (and) to give them those experiences on the World Cup, but it’s not necessarily to replace, say, one of our technicians from the World Cup that’s been there for five years,” Grover said. Perkins.
“We still want that knowledge, we want that experience, we just want to develop more women simultaneously. So we want to be able to do both, so we have to find a bit more money in some key places.
Nationally, American cross-country skiing has adopted other initiatives to promote female coaches. Gender equity “is a huge goal for us,” Grover told Perkins. The last three signings to the squad have been women and director of development Bryan Fish has achieved gender parity in the regional elite group, national elite group and U16 structures. According to Grover, the team’s international U18 staff were even coached only by women.
In 2019, the Women Ski Coaches Association (WSCA) launched “In Pursuit of Gender Equity in Coaching”. Founder Maria Stuber (who began her coaching career as director of the Nordic program at the Aspen Valley Ski & Snowboard Club), one of seven cross-country head coaches in all NCAA divisions , told Fasterskier in 2019, “Develop, retain and advance,” paraphrasing the WSCA goals.
“Bringing in more women who want to be ski coaches, turning them into really successful ski coaches, keeping them in ski coaching and helping them find really rewarding careers, does that mean doing exactly what they want to do? or work for people who will value them,” she continued to Rachel Perkins in 2019.
On its website, WSCA includes “the approval of the USSS Transitional Gender Equity Task Force at the USSS Congress” and “a marked increase in the number of female coaches in NJs, NCAA and the US National Championships. “
Equal distances for men and women
Another monumental decision made at the FIS Cross-Country Committee (CCC) on May 18 was the decision to have men and women race equal distances. The CKC voted 57% in favor of equal distances, to be implemented for the next World Cup season as well as the U23, Junior and Youth Olympic Games World Championships.
The FIS press release stated “the main argument for voting for equal distances was that it should not be a question of whether women were able to run the same distances as men, because they prove that they are already physically capable of doing so”, and “the main argument against was the time women need to travel the same distance as men and the effective television time.
“I’m actually shocked at the speed of the movement, because the FIS isn’t always known for very fast movement sometimes,” Grover told Perkins.
“Some people were very happy and some were strictly against equi-distance racing,” FIS cross-country race director Pierre Mignerey told FIS media..
“It’s not unusual for opinions to flow back and forth, as the decision really impacts what the community has been used to up until now.”
The debate over equal distances is certainly not new and not everyone – even female athletes – was in favor of this decision.
NRK reported that in the annual World Cup Athlete Survey of 114 athletes from 25 different countries, each with an average of six years of World Cup experience, 73% of athletes – and 88% of female athletes – answered ‘no’ when asked if men and women should have the same distances.
“I am not in favor of the proposal,” Norwegian star Heidi Weng told NRK.
“We spend more time on the same distance and we go out longer than the guys. So I hope that doesn’t happen. »
In 2021, Jason Albert analyzed the debate over equal distances. St. Michael’s University head coach Molly Peters claimed that even the scientific premise behind the different distances was not being met.
“We used to hear that we were trying to even out the time on the course and we want people to have the same racing experience – which is time-based,” Peters told Albert.
“The current running model, where women typically run 5 kilometers less than men, provides completely different running experiences for men and women.”
University of Colorado head coach Jana Weinberger told Albert, “When I was a competitive athlete, I was happy for women to ski shorter distances, and it didn’t bother me. never occurred to us that we should, or wanted to, ski the same distance. I was only focused on competing against the women I was running, as opposed to running the same distance as the men. I never thought running a shorter distance was a sexist decision. Weinberger added that when she spoke with her athletes, “the vast majority didn’t want to run the men’s distances.”
“For them, it wasn’t about; I can’t run that far, or the men run further because they’re stronger, but more from the point of view that I like to run the distances that we currently have and focus on women’s races, ” she said.
In May 2021, college coaches, current and former Olympians, and Nordic center directors signed the Ski Equal petition, a letter addressed to Tiger Shaw, CEO of US Ski and Snowboard as well as US Ski and Snowboard Diversity.Equity and Inclusion Committee calling for equal distances.
United States Olympic Committee recognizes Title IX at June Assembly
The fight for women is also a priority of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC). The USOPC recognized the historic bill’s half-century celebration during its 2022 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Assembly on June 23.
“Fifty years ago today, the world of sport in America took a monumental step forward,” said USOPC President Susanne Lyons in her general leadership address.
“Many of you here are too young to remember what things were like before Title IX. Unfortunately, I am not one of them,” his speech continued.
“I was in college at the time, and I can tell you that the opportunities for young women to participate in sports and advance their education with sports scholarships were miniscule compared to what is available today. .”
Lyons added that Title IX was “a game changer and obviously progress must continue.”
She went on to say, “But on this anniversary, I would like to thank those of you here for all that you have done to move women’s sport forward, overcoming old barriers and breaking through new ones. doors.”