With a three-stage plan, the World Ski Federation FIS wants to take women’s ski jumping to the next level. In the not too distant future, men and women will compete in all World Cups at the same location. sport.de explains the project and highlights the advantages and disadvantages.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that the ski jumping race director of the FIS, Sandro Pertile, is always good for a surprise. He lived up to this reputation at the 45th Forum Nordicum in Lenzerheide (Switzerland): The Italian announced a decision that the association had already made in the spring: namely, the unification of men’s and women’s ski jumping into a joint series, as in This is the case in the FIS sports of cross-country skiing and Nordic combined or in biathlon under the umbrella of the IBU.
“We expect that media interest in women’s ski jumping will continue to grow in the coming years and that we will reduce some costs,” he explained, justifying this step with the fact that “we as an association see the potential on the part of female ski jumpers and fully exploit it want.”
FIS envisages three-stage plan for merger
This project is to be implemented using a three-stage plan. The first step has already been taken with the mixed team jumping at the Summer Grand Prix Final in Klingenthal being supervised by the FIS officials who are currently responsible for the men. Three more events of this kind will follow in the winter in Lillehammer (Norway), Willingen (Germany) and Lake Placid (USA), which will be the first ever host of women’s World Cups on the American continent. In total, the female ski jumpers complete seven of their 15 stations together with the men in the winter, which should help those responsible for the FIS to merge the two series on an administrative level.
The future of his previous counterpart in the women’s series, Chika Yoshida, is also linked to this. The Japanese woman came under even more criticism last season than she already did because she repeatedly failed to find replacements for canceled competitions, so that there was increasing resistance among the jumpers and coaches. With the plan now presented, her position will no longer exist from the 2025/2026 season, so her days as FIS race director will be numbered in spring 2025 – even if Pertile did not mention this in his presentation.
From the Olympic season onwards, there will only be a permanent team of FIS officials who will lead both men’s and women’s competitions. In addition, the number of joint events will be increased to ten out of 17, which represents the second stage of the plan.
Women’s Four Hills Tournament is coming in 2026
The draft calendar for the 2026/2027 season provides for the third and final stage, namely that this is the first season in which all locations will be visited together. Along with this, Pertile promised: “This will be the season in which we introduce the Four Hills Tournament for women.” This was already announced in April 2022 for the 2023/2024 season, but a good six months later the Austrian Ski Association (ÖSV), in the person of President Roswitha Stadlober, set it to “not before 2024/ 2025” postponed. The German Ski Association (DSV) then introduced the 2NightsTour, a tour in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Oberstdorf, which was only intended to be a temporary solution.
Pertile did not want to reveal how the fusion of men’s and women’s ski jumping would work in detail, knowing full well that the project is riddled with a number of challenges. “Written on paper, it sounds easy when we decide that we will travel to all places together. It has a domino effect as the schedules of events become more crowded. But we are working on finding new solutions for the next seasons,” he said -year olds.
Big challenges await the FIS
For his team, the main challenge at joint events is to find adequate start times and therefore TV broadcast times for both genders. From now on, simultaneous competitions would no longer be possible. In addition, in the event of weather-related postponements or delays, both genders would automatically be affected if they were scheduled to compete on the same day. In such cases, the women almost always had to give way to the men. It’s hard to believe that this won’t be the case in the future.
The world association is of course saving costs by eliminating official positions, but the World Cup organizers will incur more costs for accommodation and prize money. As the event days become longer and more numerous, more working hours are added, which is why more helpers are needed.
These additional costs will inevitably mean that financially weaker locations will refrain from applying for World Cup events and the diversity that currently still exists in the calendar will therefore be lost. It is hard to imagine that a place like Ljubno ob Savinji in Slovenia, which broke a record for an all-women’s World Cup last winter with over 10,000 spectators on one day of the event, will still be a World Cup station in the future.
Lots of questions and risks
There would also be a fundamental change in the size of the jumps: While the men in the World Cup currently only jump on large hills, for the women there is a balance between normal and large hills – especially to make it easier for the younger athletes to catch up with the world’s best. So you’re sitting between two chairs here: normal hill jumping is not seen as particularly attractive by TV stations and fans despite the narrower results, but is essential for maintaining the broad masses in women’s ski jumping and is not possible in all current World Cup locations .
As good as the will is to fully exploit the undoubtedly existing development potential of women’s ski jumping, the previously known concept harbors many unanswered questions and risks in its implementation. Pertile and Co. have two winters and three summers to perfect it before they have to be measured by results.
Source: www.sport.de
