USA TODAY International Edition
WOMEN’S SKI JUMPERS LAND SECOND MAJOR SPONSOR
For a decade, the U. S. women’s ski jumping team was largely ignored by corporate sponsors, the national governing body and, most significantly, the International Olympic Committee.
After petitioning for an Olympic spot for more than 10 years, women’s ski jumping will make its hard- fought debut at the Sochi Games. Finally, the world has taken notice.
The U. S. women will be featured in a Got Chocolate Milk? national marketing campaign beginning this week. For a sport with one other major sponsor ( Visa), it’s a milestone. Beyond the added exposure the Built With Chocolate Milk campaign offers, the ski jumpers also will receive all the chocolate milk they desire, delivered to their front door.
Given the fight for acceptance, and their impressive results on the world stage, the American women enter the Sochi Games as one of the most compelling stories. Still, the struggles continue. The U. S. women prepare to begin the World Cup season $ 70,000 short of their financial goal.
Just like many assume women’s ski jumping had already been in the Olympics, many assume prospective Olympians are fully financed. Given how far the program has come, Lindsey Van, who won the sport’s first world championship in 2009, was asked what remains on her wish list.
“It’s hard to make a wish list,” Van told USA TODAY Sports. “We’re just trying to make enough to fund our season and pay our coaches. It’s not at the point where we can make a wish list. We just want to get to all our competitions.”
This season, the team has a $ 500,000 budget, its largest ever, because of increased World Cup travel to Europe, back to the USA, Japan and Russia.
“To be our absolute best going into the Olympic season, we would like to raise another $ 70,000,” said Whitney Childers, Women’s Ski Jumping USA spokeswoman. “That may seem like a drop in the hat for other organizations, but to a little organization like us, that’s a lot of money.”
Women’s Ski Jumping USA, a 501( c)( 3) non- profit organization, pays for travel, equipment, training and coaching costs. About half of that budget comes from corporate and local sponsors; the rest is from grants, fundraising and individual sponsorships. The U. S. Ski Team gives some funding to the top three athletes, and team members are given access to training facilities in Park City, Utah, and medical staff.
This support, as well as individual sponsors, has allowed Van and Jessi- ca Jerome the freedom to leave their part- time jobs as a physical therapy aide ( Van) and a waitress ( Jerome).
The U. S. ski jumping team can send up to four athletes to the Olympics. The question remains whether Sarah Hendrickson, who won the 2012 World Cup overall title, will recover in time after tearing the medial collateral and anterior cruciate ligaments in her right knee during a training jump in Germany on Aug. 21.
For the last decade, Van, 28, has been the face of the team’s struggle for Olympic inclusion, including a failed lawsuit. She has heard the president of the international skiing federation, Gian- Franco Kasper, say in 2005 that ski jumping “seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view.” Kasper is also an IOC member.
Jerome, 26, remembers being told that ski jumping would damage her reproductive organs. “When someone said that to me when I was 11, I said, ‘ I don’t want a baby anyway!’ I was an 11- year- old firecracker.”
No wonder the team enters the Olympic season with some scar tissue remaining.
“I don’t think it will feel real until we’re there,” Van said. “It’s a step. It feels like a small victory. We still have one event ( normal hill), and the men have three ( normal hill, large hill and team competition).”
In other words, there are more hills, financial and competitive, to jump.