Emily
MikeToday’s Olympics gold medal women’s hockey game matches Canada against the United States. Everyone had expected the two teams to get here and the game should be exciting. (MSNBC at 6:00 eastern.) However, a blog in Newsweek is speculating that the Olympic committee might look to eliminate women’s hockey from future winter Olympics. (See also this column in the NY Daily News.) The reason?: The two teams are so much better than the other teams.
The thinking goes like this. The summer Olympics in Beijing was the last time for women’s softball. The Olympic committee had decided to kick it out. No reasonable answer has ever been given for why they wanted it out, but much of the speculation was that the American team, which had won all three Olympic competitions before Beijing, was too dominant. (Of course, that turned out to be a bogus reason since Japan beat the U.S. for gold at Beijing.) Now, for women’s hockey, Canada and the U.S. are far ahead of other countries and the gap is growing.
I find it hard to believe that the committee would do that. After all, the committee kicked out men’s baseball at the same it kicked out women’s softball. The more convincing speculation for why the two were kicked out is that the Euro-centric Olympic committee thought softball and baseball were too associated with the United States (and Japan). And one would think that, if it kicks out women’s hockey, it would also have to kick out men’s hockey. But, on the heels of the Olympic committee’s decision not to allow women’s ski jumping in this year’s games, it would not be completely surprising if the committee takes another discriminatory action against women. And, so, the world’s women’s hockey associations need to step up their lobbying to make sure the sport stays in future Olympics.
(And, as for women’s ski jumping, I am not aware that NBC has ever mentioned during its telecasts the disparity between allowing men’s jumping but not allowing women’s jumping. I did see somewhere, however, that two women were being used (along with men) to do practice jumps to prepare the ramps for the competition. That belies any reasons previously given by the committee about the unworthiness of women jumpers.)
Filed under: Sports Tagged: | Women's Hockey
Thought you might like this satire article on women’s hockey:
http://thealbatross.ca/2010/02/concern-grows-over-unfairness-to-women-in-hockey/
Excellent article! And now, of course, there is even more reason for “banning and illegalizing all women from playing hockey, forever, and making it punishable by death” since the team is obviously a bunch of underage drinkers and cigar smokers.
We watched that fantastic game last night (sigh…bummer for USA… but great game anyway), and definitely enjoyed it! But I found the play-by-play announcing rather frustrating. I don’t consider myself a feminist, but I admit it raised my heckles to hear the announcer (male) say things like “great shot by mother of two!” Have we ever heard that in men’s hockey? “great shot by father of two!”
I suspect the announcer was intending to applaud the skill and fortitude it takes to be a mother AND a top-notch hockey player, but somehow it felt condescending to me.
I also found it odd that the announcer (again, the male) kept referring to one of the top players as “a male [hockey hall-of-famer]” Why is it not enough for her to just be a fantastic femail player?
Great points. I noticed those too. I doubt that I have ever heard a male athlete be compared to a famous female athlete. (e.g., have we ever heard “That Tiger Woods, the way he hits his bunker shots reminds me of the way Annika Sorenstam used to hit hers”?). And absolutely no announcer would ever say about a football quarterback “great pass by the father of two.”
And did you see the stories that the Canada players came back on the ice after the game drinking beer and champagne and smoking cigars? That would also be played up by the media if it had been a men’s team that did it. But, if the Olympic committee has already been thinking about wanting to eliminate women’s hockey, this gives them something more to use for their rationalization.