Slide1: A unique and exciting opportunity…
Slide2:
What if there was a sport that a Company or Sponsor could champion to Olympic status?
Women’s Ski Jumping USA Sponsorship:: Women’s Ski Jumping USA Sponsorship: Story – partnership with WSJ team athletes to champion the cause of women’s ski jumping to its final destination – the Olympic Winter Games.
Sponsorship of the strongest women’s ski jumping team in the world!
Opportunity to be associated with the movement to change the last remaining Olympic winter sport that does not have a women's event.
Women’s Ski Jumping USA offers a unique opportunity to promote a team, a cause, a mission…: Women’s Ski Jumping USA offers a unique opportunity to promote a team, a cause, a mission… What if there was a cause of equality for women in sport that would appeal to a client’s market?
What if there was a sponsorship opportunity that required minimal investment that would expand the reach of a firm’s marketing message to a wider audience?
What if a company had access to highly personable and marketable elite women athletes to participate in promotional activities?
What if a company or grant sponsor could build a marketing campaign around a group of athletes who compete in sport for the love of the sport and thrill of competition?
What if a company or grant sponsor could become associated with future Olympic athletes for a fraction of the cost of Olympic Games sponsorship?
Slide5: OPPORTUNITY AVAILABLE! THIS IS THE LAST AND ONLY REMAINING WINTER OLYMPIC SPORT THAT DOES NOT INCLUDE WOMEN.
Slide6: Ski jumping competitions are some of the most popular and watched Winter sporting events throughout Europe - cross promotional opportunities exist for sponsors at these winter celebrations. Your Logo Here!
(Ski tops and team uniforms)
An exclusive opportunity for a company or sponsor over the coming years as Women’s Ski Jumping USA athletes become the focus of media coverage as one of the key stories with the XXI Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver.:
An exclusive opportunity for a company or sponsor over the coming years as Women’s Ski Jumping USA athletes become the focus of media coverage as one of the key stories with the XXI Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. Media coverage to date:
USA Today
National Public Radio
U.S. News and World Report
MSNBC
Various National and Local Newspapers
The Wall Street Journal online
ABC Good Morning America*
*Scheduled for February 2006
Women ski jumpers eyeing 2010 takeoff By Vicki Michaelis, USA TODAY March 10, 2005: Women ski jumpers eyeing 2010 takeoff By Vicki Michaelis, USA TODAY March 10, 2005 Lindsey Van sees the progress when she opens her eyes first thing in the morning.
A couple years ago, she might have had hay at her side, maybe a cow or two. Now she wakes up in a hotel bed, the relative luxury a sign that a goal she has pursued more than half her 20 years is closer to her grasp.
Van is the world's No. 2-ranked women's ski jumper. With a new international competitive tour this season, her sport is moving toward its biggest leap: A spot in the Winter Olympics.
Bobsled added a women's division for the 2002 Winter Games, leaving ski jumping and Nordic combined — in which competitors both jump and cross-country ski — as the only two Winter Olympic sports without a women's category.
"There are enough women in the world at a quality level," Van says. "And every other sport has a women's division, so why shouldn't we? It just seems fair to me."
The argument against women's ski jumping at the Olympics has been that too few women compete for too few countries.
"It's that circular argument," says Anita DeFrantz, a U.S. member of the International Olympic Committee, the arbiter of which sports get added to the Olympics. "There are no women jumping, so we won't support any women jumping, which leads to no women jumping."
The world rankings compiled from the new women's Continental Cup tour, sanctioned by the international ski federation (FIS), reflect some depth and breadth. The top 10 women hail from six different countries. The USA and Norway each have three competitors in the top 10.
"We're seeing a lot more girls, and we're seeing a lot more talent," says sixth-ranked Jessica Jerome, 18, who trains with Van at the Olympic hill in Park City, Utah. "Before it was just a couple girls that dominated. Now it's so close and so much more fun.“
Van and Jerome will compete this weekend on the famed Holmenkollen hill in Norway, the last Continental Cup winter stop for this season. Cup events also are held on grass in the summer.
U.S. jumpers' travel this season was funded by Women's Ski Jumping USA, a Park City-based federation formed in 2002 and led by Jerome's dad, Peter, an airline pilot. The federation took in $50,000 at a fundraiser last fall for this season's travel and competition expenses. It wants to attract sponsorships for coming seasons to expand its support to training and to hosting clinics across the country.
"We get to stay in nicer places," Van says of this season's funding and the switch to the Continental Cup from the loosely organized women's competitions of the past. "We get better food, better accommodations and better organization throughout the whole process of a competition.
"Three years ago, we stayed a whole week in a barn in Austria."
Officials from Women's Ski Jumping USA also will be in Norway this weekend to discuss with their international counterparts a strategy for convincing FIS to add women to the 2007 world championships program. Competing at worlds would mark a significant step toward Olympic acceptance by the 2010 Winter Games.
Ultimately, FIS officials must nominate women's ski jumping for the Olympics. The IOC has shown over the past decade that it's eager to make additions to the Winter Games and, with decisions such as the one that put women's bobsled on the program, to even any gender gaps.
"You don't have to build anything new," says DeFrantz, a longtime proponent of adding women's ski jumping. "The hills are already there."
So are the heartstrings-tugging stories.
"Pretty much all the decisions I've made since I was about 10 are for ski jumping," says Van, who attends the University of Utah to be close to her training hill. "It's something that I'm really passionate about, that I really like and something I can't really live without at this point."
Flying economy By Nell Boyce, U.S. News & World Report January 21, 2002 : Flying economy By Nell Boyce, U.S. News & World Report January 21, 2002 As the country prepares for the Winter Olympics, some are asking why women can't (ski) jump.
Women ski jumpers are hoping that the International Ski Federation will approve Olympic competition in 2006.
At the Olympics next month, two of the nation's top female ski jumpers will catapult through the air as thousands of spectators look on. It will be an exhilarating moment for Lindsey Van and Jessica Jerome, teenage jumpers who both grew up in Park City, Utah, where the event will take place. But there's a catch: Instead of competing for gold, they'll just be warming up the crowd and the track before the main event, a process called forerunning. "They give you a suit, a helmet, passes, and credentials to get in anywhere," says Jerome, 14. "You feel like you're a king or a queen."
But not like an Olympic champion. With the addition this year of female bobsledding and skeleton (headfirst sledding), the ski jump events are the only Winter Olympic sports without women. After the 1998 winter games in Nagano, Japan, two top Olympic officials suggested that women's ski jumping had a shot the next time around. But when push came to shove, the sport's governing body--the International Ski Federation--just wasn't willing to make it happen. "There are already some excellent lady ski jumpers, but the number is not enough for World Ski Championships or even Olympic Winter Games," says Annemarie Friedrich of the FIS.
Cool runnings. Back in 1998, this position was somewhat more compelling. But the same could have been said of women's bobsledding, which got support from its international governing body. "Bobsled was being challenged by the [International Olympic Committee] to expand its program on the world scene," says David Kurtz, who works with the international bobsledding federation. Many experts feared that bobsledding might get dropped from the Olympics if it didn't get more competitors from more nations.
This was a motivating force, and a women's world championship was held despite the relative dearth of female bobsledders. That, and the 1999 announcement that women's bobsledding had made the Olympics, attracted many women to the sport.
This just shows what a Catch-22 female ski jumpers are in. They can't have elite events, because the FIS says there aren't enough good competitors, but the sport would draw in more women if the FIS held the events. Anita DeFrantz, chair of the IOC's women in sports committee, says the FIS should act. "The ski jump is there. . . . It boils down to the will to do the right thing."
And that's what makes some jumpers worry about 2006: More and more women are jumping well, but the FIS's position hasn't changed. Many supporters of the female jumpers chalk that up to chauvinism--or just plain lack of interest on the part of the organization. "I personally think that not all but a lot of people at FIS have not been excited about having women in this event," says Alan Johnson, chair of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association's ski jumping committee, whose daughter, Alissa, jumps. Johnson thinks that "it's just a matter of time" but hopes it happens sooner rather than later, because the wait will be frustrating.
Karla Keck, 26, a pioneer jumper from Wisconsin, feels that frustration. The fourth generation in her family to ski jump, Keck has traveled extensively, largely on her own dime, to compete with men and to attend the first women's events. In 1999, she became the first unofficial women's world champion at an exhibition in Austria--held at night in the rain. "We all thought that this would be the year we'd have an Olympic event," says Keck, who's now counting on 2006. "I think we'll be there, and we'll be ready to put on a really good show."
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE Let them jump Date: December 15, 2004 Page: A20 Section: Opinion : THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE Let them jump Date: December 15, 2004 Page: A20 Section: Opinion To Lindsey Van, ski jumping is nearly a full-time job. The 20-year-old Park City woman spends more than 30 hours a week at it and she is ranked No. 2 in the world. But she can't ski jump in the Olympics because she is a woman, and that is unfair and unreasonable. Ski jumping and nordic combined (which involves both ski jumping and cross-country skiing) are the only two winter Olympic sports for which there is no women's competition, despite the fact that the top women can jump distances that are comparable and sometimes greater than the marks set by men.
Those who hold the key that would unlock the door to Olympic competition for Van and Jessica Jerome, 17, also from Park City and ranked fourth, say the reasons are based on economics and tradition. There is little enough money for other athletes who now compete under the auspices of the United States Ski and Snowboard Association, they are told, and it would be burdensome to add women's ski jumping.
That may be true, but fairness, not economics, should be USSA's guide here. After all, the essence of the Olympic spirit is sportsmanship and sportswomanship. Moreover, the International Ski Federation needs the full support of the USSA before it can propose to the International Olympic Committee that women's ski jumping be added to the 2010 Olympics.
Women's Ski Jumping USA has given the sport legitimacy in this country, but it still lacks the support it gets in Europe, particularly in Scandinavia, even though the Americans beat the Europeans last year, winning the Ladies Grand Prix.
Superior athletes and media attention can help any sport and women ski jumpers would provide plenty of both. The sport has hundreds of competitors in Europe, North America and Asia, and many who could be contenders for spots at the Vancouver Winter Games in 2010. This year women from 12 nations competed in International Ski Federation-sanctioned competitions.
If the USSA is worried about its already tight budget, Women's Ski Jumping USA can help with that, too. The group raised its entire budget of $50,000 so the team can compete this winter in the international federation's Continental Cup series.
International Olympic Committee member and former Olympic medalist Anita DeFrantz has rightly urged donors and Olympic officials not to put women's ski jumping on the back burner. The IOC will decide in 2006 whether to add the sport in 2010, so USSA must act now.
Women ski jumpers deserve to compete on the ultimate world stage.
Slide13: A unique and exciting opportunity…
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