Getting there
Winter Olympics offer women more opportunities, but equality hasn’t yet arrived
AZHANGJIAKOU, China shley Caldwell knew she had lost her shot at the podium as soon as her back hit the snow. The freestyle skier from Virginia possessed the two highest scores of the night entering the third of three rounds in the women’s aerials final. But on her last performance of the Beijing Games, she went into the jump a little too fast, caught a small draft and fell backward upon landing.
“I thought I had it, I really did,” Caldwell said, smiling through tears.
Instead, Caldwell finished fourth with a score of 83.71 — more than 20 points behind the lower of her two scores entering the final — behind surprise American bronze medalist Megan Nick (93.76), silver medalist Hanna Huskova of Belarus (107.95) and gold medalist Xu Mengtao of China (108.61), who let out a roaring fist pump as she landed her jump.
But Caldwell’s fourth Olympic Games will have a happy postscript despite what she described as a heartbreaking competition.
She leaves Beijing with the first medal of her career — gold, to boot — which she won with the U.S. team last week when freestyle skiing’s mixed team aerials event made its Olympic debut.
That she even had the chance to compete for two medals felt like a breakthrough 12 years into her Olympic career.
“Having a second opportunity for a medal is huge,” Caldwell, 28, said. “It draws attention to what an incredible sport this is, and for our country, the United States — I would love for these two medals now, the team medal and Megan Nick’s bronze to help encourage the sport in our country.”
Mixed team aerials is one of seven events that debuted during the Beijing Games, five of which were part of the International Olympic Committee’s continued push toward gender parity at the Olympics. In addition to mixed team aerials, mixed team snowboard cross, mixed team short-track relay, mixed team ski jumping and women’s monobob had their inaugural runs here.
Men’s and women’s big air freestyle skiing is also new this year.
Caldwell’s second competition of the Beijing Games fell on a day in which Kallie Humphries took gold and Elana Meyers Taylor took silver in the Olympic debut for women’s monobob, a pair of wins for Team USA that were aired in a prime slot on NBC following the Super Bowl.
Four-man bobsled has been a part of the Olympic program since the first Winter Games in 1924, and two-man bobsled was added in 1932, but two-woman bobsled wasn’t added until 2002.
Like female aerials skiers, until this year, female bobsledders had just one choice of event at the
Olympics despite that four-woman bobsled debuted at the world championships five years ago.
Adding women’s monobob was the first step toward solving a systematic problem: In part because women couldn’t compete in Olympic bobsled for so long, many countries lack a sliding program with the ability to produce and support enough women — drivers and brakemen — to send teams of four to the Olympics. In monobob, countries need just one athlete to participate, and enough nations had that to fortify a new event.
Humphries and Meyers Taylor were critical in getting the discipline added to the Games.
“To be able to have two opportunities to medal now; that’s a game-changer,” Meyers Taylor said. “Now we’re more on-par with the men, with the two medals. We’d still like to have more numbers for women, and to have that comparability to medal for all the women, brakemen included, but you know, getting the monobob added was a start. It’s really cool to see all the girls out there, see all the different nations represented and see how well they did, like, this was a tough track for these monobob sleds, this is not easy. And to see from top to bottom how well the girls did and how well they represented, it’s really amazing.”
Because of the new events in Beijing, Games organizers are touting these Olympics as the most gender-balanced Winter Games to date, with women making up 45 percent of athletes and women’s events tallying 46, up two from four years ago in PyeongChang.
But as Meyers Taylor pointed out Monday, gender parity can be measured in myriad ways. The number of events available only to women — which is still fewer compared to men — is just one.
At the Winter Games, women still race shorter distances than men in cross-country skiing, speed skating, short-track speedskating and biathlon. In ski jumping, which didn’t allow women to compete in the Olympics until 2014 after a decadelong push spearheaded by a group of American women, women jump off only what’s called the normal hill.
Men can jump off the normal hill, the target landing distance for which is 90 meters, and the large hill, the target landing distance for which is 120 meters. The discrepancy means male ski jumpers have four events open to them: individual normal hill, individual large hill, the men’s team event and the mixed team event. Women have just two.
In luge, only men compete in doubles. And Nordic combined, which is cross-country skiing plus ski jumping, is the last sport in either the Winter or Summer Olympics that is available only to men.
Meyers Taylor reiterated Monday women may not feel the need to race the exact same distances or compete in Nordic combined to be considered equals to men; parity isn’t about achieving the exact same thing. It’s about having just as many quality choices and opportunity.
“My hope is that women will continue to have options. Of course, if I had it my way, there would be women’s four-man, and breakmen would have multiple medal opportunities,” Meyers Taylor said. “… I really want the younger pilots to have the choice. If they decide that monobob is what they want to do, then yes, I’ll support them wholeheartedly. But if they decide they want four-woman, then yes, I’m going to support that, too. Now it’s up to the next generation to decide where the sport goes, and I think it’s in good hands.”