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Is having equal courses for women in extreme sports progressive, or dangerous?
There have been remarkable numbers of injuries in Sochi, particularly in some of the extreme sports such as freestyle skiing and snowboarding, and it's notable that those injuries seem to be disproportionately affecting female competitors. One explanation that has been proposed for that is that unlike in many Olympic sports such as alpine skiing and luge where women either compete on different courses or start further down, both men and women use the same courses in extreme events such as slopestyle, halfpipe, ski cross and snowboardcross. As John Branch of The New York Times wrote earlier this week, that's a substantial difference from the typical Olympic approach:
Most of the accidents have occurred at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park, the site of the snowboarding and freestyle skiing events like halfpipe, slopestyle and moguls.
And most of the injuries have been sustained by women.
Through Monday night, a review of the events at the Extreme Park counted at least 22 accidents that forced athletes out of the competition or, if on their final run, required medical attention. Of those, 16 involved women. The proportion of injuries to women is greater than it appears given that the men’s fields are generally larger. ...
Unlike some of the time-honored sports of risk, including Alpine skiing, luge and ski jumping, there are few concessions made for women. For both sexes, the walls of the halfpipe are 22 feet tall. The slopestyle course has the same tricky rails and the same huge jumps. The course for ski cross and snowboard cross, a six-person race to the finish over jumps and around icy banked curves, is the same for men and women. The jumps for aerials are the same height. The bumps in moguls play no gender favorites.
“Most of the courses are built for the big show, for the men,” said Kim Lamarre of Canada, the bronze medalist in slopestyle skiing, where the competition was delayed a few times by spectacular falls. “I think they could do more to make it safer for women.”
Branch goes on to discuss how equal courses aren't the standard in other Olympic sports. Women compete on easier alpine skiing courses, start lower in luge and only compete on the smaller hill in ski jumping, making the identical courses in the extreme sports stand out more. It's certainly not a consensus that the Olympics should change that, though.
Perhaps part of the problem is that while the top female competitors can handle the most difficult courses, the typically-narrower fields of top contenders on the women's side may mean some qualifiers aren't able to race safely on tough courses. That's something that came up in the wake of Komissarova's crash, with Canadian skier Brady Leman saying "[The course is] designed for the best athletes in the world. Skicross is a young sport, and there's quite an ability spread still, especially on the ladies' side still." A possible solution could be tightening the qualifying standards and reducing the fields of competitors rather than designing an easier course for women, as Branch adds that having equal courses seems to work in the narrower fields of the X Games, which often only have 10 or so top competitors in an event.
It's also notable that while ski cross, snowboard cross and halfpipe present every competitor with the same course, slopestyle doesn't. Each athlete can choose what features they want to go off of, so a safer course is available. As Branch writes, though, some of the top competitors still want to press on with the big jumps:
Most women grew up in a time when they view themselves as capable as men.
“We should be able to showcase our sport on the big jumps,” said Devin Logan of the United States, who won a silver medal in ski slopestyle. Logan said she preferred the bigger jumps because they give her more time in the air to perform her tricks, though she appreciates the option that the smaller jumps provide in poor weather or snow conditions. But peer pressure can be an issue, she said.
“We’re all competitive athletes,” Logan said. “We all want to stand on the podium. If someone is hitting tricks off the bigger jumps, then you’re going to want to, too.”
In the end, whether equal courses should be continued going forward is probably something that should be decided by the athletes in each sport. A top-down attempt to say "This isn't safe for women" is incredibly flawed; that was used as a way to keep women out of ski jumping until these Games, and bringing that sort of logic back won't help anyone. If a majority of female athletes like Lamarre would rather compete on safer courses, though, that's something that could be examined. However, this could go the other way, with a movement for women to compete on equal courses in alpine skiing, luge and ski jumping as well. Sports are never going to be 100 per cent safe, so the question for each athlete is how much risk they want to accept. If enough female Olympians are willing to take perhaps an increased risk of injury to compete on the same courses as the men, it's hard to say that they shouldn't be given that opportunity.
