The Title IX Games

The Schoolhouse at Sugarbush getting in the spirit

It should be no surprise that I’m a big fan of the Winter Olympics. As much as I’m so focused on alpine skiing as a general proposition, there seems to always be one event or one story in the Games that really captures my imagination – the ski jumping at Lillehammer, for example, just resonated with me. This time around, in Sochi, what I found really compelling, the story that held my interest was something bigger picture, something more about the evolving nature of sports in society. I am convinced that the Sochi Winter Olympics provided us with a visible and important benchmark for the success of women’s place in sports. These were the Title IX Games.

My thinking about this began this past fall after having watched “Ready to Fly”, the exceptional 2012 documentary about women’s ski jumping. The film is about the exclusion and eventual inclusion of women’s ski jumping in the Olympics, and about the extraordinary athletes responsible for that pursuit. The most poignant moment (in a very stirring film) occurred when, after having lost their legal fight for inclusion in the 2010 Winter Olympics, then reigning world champion American Lindsey Van stood on the courthouse steps in Vancouver and in a hail of emotions said “I can’t believe my future is in the hands of some old dude!” To me, her reaction demonstrated that despite the difficult road and numerous challenges of pursuing her sport, she nonetheless had believed that if she trained hard, kept her focus and remained resolute, that the she could achieve her goals. She believed that she lived in a world where right prevailed, where merit counted, and where people were enlightened. Her devastation illustrated to me (to all of us) that she was regrettably wrong on the one hand, but it also showed something positive. It illustrated that having been a beneficiary of Title IX, of equality of opportunity in sports in America (relative to her predecessors, anyway) had imbued Van with a sense of what was possible. Not as a woman, but as a person. Her anguish and disbelief illustrated how far we’ve come. Rosa Parks expected to be removed from the bus; Lindsey Van expected to be able to compete in the Olympics.

So many of the great feats of athleticism, the great stories of person trial and compelling devotion from these Sochi Olympics are about women athletes who embody the Olympic ideal regardless of their results – further, higher, faster, stronger, etc. Lindsey Van did not win a medal at these games, nor did the great American Nordic skier Kikkan Randall. Hannah Kearney won bronze in moguls and professed her disappointment at it not being gold, much to the chagrin of the nay-saying press who have no idea what it’s like to be in her boots. Luge, skeleton, half-pipe, bobsled, slopestyle, every event seemed to be yet another moment where women athletes were treated like athletes and not like cute girls playing in a man’s world.

Obviously, the cause of gender equality has a long way to go. Some nations have made great strides, many haven’t. For me, at the end of the day, the simple expectation of the women of Team USA and others (and of the men on those teams as well) that women athletes will receive the same consideration, respect and opportunities as their male counterparts is a sign of the successes of the last three decades of work. I hope it’s not too far fetched to think that at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games, the term “female athlete” included the word female as a descriptor and not a qualifier. We have a long way to go, but it’s OK to feel good about how far we’ve come already.



Showing our support for Warren, VT local Nolan Kasper. #GoNolanGo!