Anette Sagen should simply be known as one of the greatest ski jumpers of all time. And she would have been were she born a boy. In episode 8 we tell the story of women's ski jumping and how all female ski jumpers have had to fight for their right to participate and compete. And no one did so better and more fiercely than ski jumping pioneer Anette Sagen who dominated women's ski jumping in the early-to-mid 2000s, and involuntarily became a feminist icon while doing so.
Anette Sagen should simply be known as one of the greatest ski jumpers of all time. And she would have been were she born a boy. In episode 8 we tell the story of women's ski jumping and how all female ski jumpers have had to fight for their right to participate and compete. And no one did so better and more fiercely than ski jumping pioneer Anette Sagen who dominated women's ski jumping in the early-to-mid 2000s, and involuntarily became a feminist icon while doing so.
“What I did was almost a bit selfish, because the only thing I wanted was to jump. Nothing would be better than if I could start over again and be fifteen years old today. I would rather start over without having to fight the battle.”
Hey there and welcome to Ski Heroes! My name is Eivind, and today is Sunday January 29th 2023 as I’m recording episode 8 from the ski lodge in Houston, TX, the skiing capital of the world.
Happy new year everybody, and I suppose I should through in a merry Christmas as well! My sincere apologies that I have not published a new episode since the Halloween special we did on the Hahnenkamm Rennen back on October 31st last year! I can not promise that there will not be some breaks between new episodes in the future, but I sincerely hope to avoid three month intervals between episodes moving forward. I started working on this episode shortly after the Halloween special, and I even had hopes of doing a Christmas special. But then life got in the way as it sometimes does. And a busy work schedule got made worse by a very painful and stubborn back injury that hit me in mid December, and with the holidays coming up etc I just never got around to finishing this one before now.
At least that’s what I’m telling myself, it’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!
As the winter officially kicked off with skiing competitions again, I felt I wanted to highlight another story from my own sport growing up, ski jumping. And this story is one I remember vividly from the early 2000s as it was equally as much about this episode’s Ski Hero’s fight for her rights to compete as it was about her jumping. And just saying that is extremely unfair to her, because it’s as a ski jumper she should be remembered, simply because she was damned good at it. And I hope I can do her jumping justice as the story unfolds. With no further ado, our ski hero this week is Norwegian ski jumper Anette Sagen. And as the tradition is when we’re covering ski jumpers on Ski Heroes, pun intended let’s jump into it.
For those who listened to Episode 2 about Jan Boklov, we discussed briefly that ski jumping was a boys sport and had always been so. That said, and a suppose a “not so fast” is also appropriate here. Because growing up a ski jumper, I always remember that there were some girls who were competing. I suppose in hindsight, especially after researching this story, I should be quite proud of having been a member of the ski jumping community in Voss in Norway where the girls had their own class and were allowed to compete on even terms as the boys in all the local town and county competitions. I vividly remember jumpers Irene Tillung and Heidi Lunde competing in the girls class. I think they were two or three years older than me. Irene I still know a bit today, Heidi I have never known. But I remember both of their names to this day, even though it’s 30 or so years ago that I attended ski jumping competitions together with them.
Randi Skjeldal is another local Voss jumper who competed in the girls class. She was the younger sister of one of my starkest competitors, and she could usually outjump all of us.
Although there were never as many girls competing in ski jumping as there were boys when I was growing up, it was usually just two or three, at least they were represented. And they were allowed to compete. And receive medals and awards just like the boys. Because up until quite recently that has certainly not been the case for female ski jumpers at the international stage. And having said that, I can actually say that female ski jumpers will not be on even ground with male jumpers until this year, because 2023 is the first time women are allowed to compete in ski flying, the final frontier of the male chauvinists who have made the rules for ski jumping for far too many years.
Going back to Episode 2 about Jan Boklov for a second, some of you may also remember the Norwegian Torbjorn Yggeseth, the president of the FIS ski jumping committee who starkly opposed the V-style that Boklov discovered. Well, you guessed, it, the same Yggeseth will play a central role also in this story. Because surprise surprise, he was also a stark opponent of women in ski jumping. And our Ski Hero of this week, Anette Sagen, went head to head with Yggeseth to pave the way for women’s right to compete in ski jumping at the international stage.
It's bizarre really that this was even necessary. Aside from American Football I can’t think of a single sport where women have been discriminated against the way they have in ski jumping. And honestly, I’m not sure that many women are interested in playing American football, which is perhaps why I haven’t heard of many people complaining about this. If they wanted to, I’m sure they would be allowed to compete. But ski jumping, since the beginning, has been a boys only club. And, pun intended, boy have the men fought to keep it this way.
Our story begins on January 10th 1985 in Mosjoen in Norway. Or, I’m not sure that’s when the actual story starts. But that’s at least when the hero of the story is born. It was still four years until Anette Sagen would do her first ski jump. The same age as I was when I started. But she was far far more talented than I ever was at it. From a young age she excelled at the sport. And as a teenager she was accepted to the ski jumping high school in Heimdal, close to the city of Trondheim in Norway. In the late 1990s and early 2000s a small, but very talented group of female ski jumpers emerged at the global stage, led by jumpers from Norway, Austria, Sweden, Germany, Japan, and the United States. In 1997 the Austrian jumper Eva Ganster set the world record for women when she jumped 167m in the ski flying hill of Kulm in Austria when she was a trial jumper for the men’s competition. And in 2003 her country-woman Daniela Iraschko became the first woman to conquer the magic 200m mark when she landed at exactly 200meters in Kulm. In the USA, Lindsay Van and Jessica Jerome were making headlines with their jumping. And in Norway, Henriette Smeby, who was a trial jumper at one of my last competitions in 1999 and who jumped much further than I did, Line Jahr, and of course Anette Sagen were all making impressive jumps. The problem at the time was just that the international skiing federation FIS wanted nothing to do with them. They could jump for fun, or for the fun of others. They could attend local competitions if the local arranging committee’s allowed it. But they could not compete at the international stage or in championships or the Olympics. Women ski jumpers were essentially reduced to half-time entertainment, often jumping during the break between the first and the second round during the men’s competitions. For a while, women were not even allowed as trial jumpers for the men, FIS essentially just wanted to keep the rarity of female ski jumpers just that. A rarity. Meanwhile, women were competing in other snow-based extreme sports. Long time ago, women were allowed to compete in downhill skiing. And through the 1980s and 90s as freestyle skiing and snowboarding gained popularity, women were allowed to compete on even grounds as men in all the different varieties of competition. But somehow ski jumping became the last frontier. Ski jumping has been called the first extreme sport, and perhaps it was. And for the longest time, women were discouraged from jumping for various bogus medical reasons. For a long time, doctors were saying that women’s ovaries could come loose if they did ski jumping. Further, society also tried to discourage women from ski jumping, saying that it was unladylike, unattractive, and even immoral. The argument of unattractive was largely based on that ski jumping would mess up a woman’s hair, something which I personally think could be kinda sexy, but I suppose it was not back in the day. And I have to say I really wonder on what ground the argument of immorality was claimed. Back in the day, male ski jumpers were the biggest sports stars of their time. The ski jumpers were the ones the kids looked up to, the news papers wanted to write about, and the women wanted to sleep with. And I suppose the popularity the male ski jumpers enjoyed with the women back in the day played a central role as the moral high ground of the time was worried of a similar effect on men with women ski jumpers…
In Episode 1 about Sondre Norheim we learned that the first known ski jumping competition was held in Hoydalsmo in Telemark in Norway in 1866. Now, I suppose several places want to claim that they hosted the first known ski jumping competition. And the Norwegian area of Trysil claims to have hosted a ski jumping competition as early as 1862. Regardless of when or where the first competition was ultimately held, the female jumper Ingrid Olavsdottir Vestby competed in this competition in Trysil and she jumped over 6 meters, close to 20 ft. And as the news papers from the time describe her jumps: “she soared past the past the point where many a brave lad had lost his balance earlier in the competition.” Spectators shouted bravos because “they had never seen a girl jump on skis and they had been more anxious than when she flew over their heads.” And she did all of this while wearing a skirt!
So safe to say, women have played a role in ski jumping since the very beginning.
In 1910, Austrian jumper Paula Lamberg, quickly named the “Floating Princess” for her daring jumps, set a new record for women when she jumped 22 meters. Spectators were breathtaken by her performance, and so were the newspapers. Although when reading the article written about it one can also quickly see the forces women were up against when ski jumping:
“Jumps of this length are very good, even for men. It is understandable that ski jumping is performed very rarely by women, and taking a close look, not really a recommendable sport for them. One prefers to see women with nicely mellifluous movements, which show elegance and grace, like in ice skating or lawn tennis…and it is not enjoyable or aesthetic to see how a representative of the female gender falls when jumping from a hill, flips over and with mussed-up hair and glides down towards the valley in a snow cloud.”
One would like to think that we’ve come a bit further in 2022, but as we will continue to see in this story, we’ve come nowhere near as far as we’d like to think..
Throughout the 1920s it was starting to be widely recognized that physical activity was good for representatives of both genders, and women were encouraged to get out in the wintertime to exercise and enjoy themselves with activities such as snow-shoeing, ice skating, and even light forms of skiing. But ski jumping, of course, was discouraged. As Doctor Gustave Klein-Doppler wrote in the 1926 book Wintersport Yearbook: “Ski-jumping is not good for the female organism”
The 1930s saw rapid improvements in ski jumping technique with the development of the Kongsberger technique. And the Ruud brothers from Kongsberg in Norway, led by the magnificent Birger Ruud became ski jumping rock stars. Hills got bigger and jumps got longer. In 1936, Austrian jumper Sep Bradl broke the first dream barrier of 100m when jumped 101.5 meters in Planica in the former Yugoslavia.
Women’s ski jumping also saw stark improvements through the 1930s. In the US, ski jumping shows in stadiums had become a thing, pioneered and led mostly by Scandinavian immigrants and their descendants. Of course. The concept was simply to build a ski jumping hill in a stadium and charge entry fees for a ski jumping show – almost like a forerunner to today’s Disney on Ice. It’s quite fascinating to see the images from these hills. Massive wooden scaffolding-like constructions were built inside places such as Soldier Field in Chicago and Dodger stadium in Los Angeles, and there was even an indoor ski jumping hill at Madison Square Garden in New York City. One of the stars at these competitions was Norwegian immigrant to the US Johanna Kolstad, named the Queen of the Skies. And in 1938 she jumped 72 meters, setting the new world record for women. I mean dammit, my own personal best set in 1999 was 79 meters, and here she was jumping almost as far in the 30s with the equipment, technique and style of the time!!
But as the WWII broke out in the late 1930s, women’s ski jumping saw a sharp decline. I suppose given the marginal nature of women in ski jumping to begin with it did not take much for the sport to go under. And already decades of opposition from everything from doctors to fellow male ski jumpers I’m sure also took it’s toll. Women found other areas of entertainment, and alpine skiing at this point did not discriminate against them nearly the same way ski jumping did. It was not until 1972 that Johanna Kolstad’s 72 meter world record from 1938 was broken when Norwegian jumper Anita Wold jumped 80 meters, and that in the world famous Holmenkollen hill in Oslo. And she did so as a trial jumper for the men’s competition. Of course.
Anita Wold eventually topped out at 97.5 meters. And in 1981, Finnish ski jumper Tiina Lethola finally broke the 100m barrier when she jumped 110m on the large hill in Lahti in Finland. Then things got quiet again for women ski jumpers.
But in the early 1990s something started to happen. Austrian jumpers Eva Ganster and her friend Michaela Schmidt started to compete in local competitions. Sometimes they competed against each others. Sometimes they had to compete in the boys’ class, and other times they were reduced to being trial jumpers for the men. And of course, they fought ski jumping officials every part of the way, just like women had done for about a century already. I mean, this is a bit crazy, it’s the 1990s and ski jumping officials were yet again busting out the age old bogus medical arguments about why women shouldn’t do ski jumping. But FIS officials had not counted on Eva Ganster’s secret weapon: her father Edgar Ganster. Or should I say, Doctor Edgar Ganster. Because he would listen to none of these outdated arguments for why his daughter could not compete, and saw absolutely no medical reason what so ever why she and her fellow ski jumping sisters should be discriminated against. His efforts soon paid off, because young Eva was allowed as a trial jumper in the Vierschanzentournee in 1993, the German-Austrian 4-hills tournament taking place every year from end of December through first week of January. And in 1994 the same 16-year old Eva Ganster was allowed as a trial jumper at the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, where she also set a new world record for women when she jumped 113.5m on the large hill, beating Tiina Lethola’s 13 year old record.
The FIS at this point were reluctantly starting to notice the women, and at the end of the 1994 season they agreed to set up a study group to at least look at the possibility of accepting women into the sport. Talk about moving at the speed of a glacier!
And that just about brings us to where we kinda started this episode, because Eva Ganser now becomes the first woman to do a ski flying jump in 1997 when she set the world record of 167m as a trial jumper for the men’s competition, a jump that I remember watching on TV. And in the summer of 1997 a international meet for female jumpers was held in Lahti in Finland. At least something was in the works although there was still a long way to go.
A small, but very talented, group of female skiers, but they had nowhere to compete. There was no FIS world cup for women, they were not allowed to compete in the Olympics and they were not allowed at the world championships. At the 1998 Jr World Championships in St Moritz in Switzerland, women were allowed an “unofficial” competition. So no award ceremony, and they were not even given medals. But I guess they were at least allowed to participate, their jumps were measured and they were given style points. In 1999, the FIS started something called the FIS Ladies Grand Prix, which was to be an alternative to the German Austrian four hills tournament. Is it just me that find this to be a highly offensive and patronizing name? No world cup status, and far from it, but the FIS at least officially recognized that female ski jumpers exist at this point and they also at least decided to make an international competition for them. But where the men’s FIS world cup competition has over 30 competitions per season, the FIS Ladies Grand Prix had a mere five competitions in one season. I mean, this is just insulting!
By 2002, Anette Sagen was 17 years old and she was now a student at the Ski Jumping academy at the Heimdal High School. Heimdal high school is located right by the Granaasen ski jumping facility in Trondheim in Norway. And as a side story I suppose I should mention that I was accepted to that very school back in the day, although I ultimately ended up turning it down in the end. Probably a wise choice given my ultimate talent for the sport, or perhaps I should say the lack thereof. But Anette was a student there and for good reason. Right outside of her class room window she could see the 90m and 120 meter hills where she would practice both winter and summer.
And in 2002 she also made her debut in the Ladies Grand Prix tournament, and she did so with a bang. At this point, five competitions is all the women got for their tournament, including one team event. So really just four individual competitions. And all of them were on K85m hills or smaller. Anette Sagen finished on the podium on all four individual competitions, two second places and two third places for a second place overall, behind the Austrian world record holder Daniela Iraschko, and ahead of Sweden’s Helena Olsson who finished third. The following season she continued where she had left off the previous season, but this time with two wins and two second places for the 2003 Ladies Grand Prix over all title, ahead of another ski jumping pioneer, Austria’s Eva Ganster, and with Lindsay Van from the US finishing third. And this is around the time when I started noticing Anette Sagen, because she started to make a name for herself in the Norwegian news for her results. And also because she did some very impressive jumps on the larger hills. February 1st 2003 during a Norwegian Cup competition at Holmenkollen she set a new hill record for women with 121 meters. And when you look at that jump, it seemed like an insult that she was forced to compete on such small hills at the international stage. Following her Holmenkollen hill record she voiced her dream of jumping ski flying for the first time. The Austrians Eva Ganster and Daniela Iraschko had already been allowed to jump ski flying as trial jumpers for the men’s competition, with Iraschko setting the world record at 200m the same season. Sagen suggested that the top five women from the Ladies GP should have their own competition as a season ender at the world’s largest ski jumping hill in Planica that same season. Enter Torbjorn Yggeseth from the FIS ski jumping committee. Because of course there was no way the women would be allowed to compete in Planica. Yggeseth immediately countered by saying he was “less than thrilled with the idea of women in ski flying. They should focus on 70 and 90m hills where they belong.” To add further insult to injury, Yggeseth followed up by cancelling the women’s event at the annual Holmenkollen competition, where a handful of women had had their own competition for a couple of years along with the men’s competition.
And this marked the first of many confrontations between Yggeseth and Anette Sagen. Because Anette Sagen wanted to not only compete internationally, but also have a women’s world cup, be allowed to compete in the world championships, the Olympics, and perhaps more than anything else to be allowed to compete in ski flying. Going into 2004, Anette Sagen had established herself as the leading female ski jumper. She dominated the Ladies GP this year, winning two individual competitions as well as the title overall. And the women were again allowed to have their own unofficial competition in Holmenkollen this year. 18 female jumpers from seven different nations participated, Anette Sagen and Daniela Iraschko tying for the win, and with only 37 points difference between the winner and number 10 in the competition, showing a remarkable high level of performance. And Anette Sagen set a fantastic new hill recorded again in Holmenkollen with 127.5m. Strong voices in both the world of skiing as well as in politics were now strongly promoting that women should be allowed to compete in both the world championships and the Olympics, but Yggeseth and the FIS of course wanted it differently. I suppose as a compromise, FIS decided they would start a women’s continental cup for the following 2004/05 season, the continental cup being the second tier cup to the World Cup. But the 2004 season was not yet over. And there was something else taking place in 2004 that there was just no way Anette Sagen was gonna miss out on. Because for the first time there was a ski flying competition taking place in the men’s Continental Cup in the ski flying hill of Vikersund in Norway. And keep in mind, the competitors in the Continental Cup are the second tier jumpers, the ones who didn’t make it to the world cup. For the men apparently, it was OK for the second best jumpers to compete in ski flying. But for the women not even the best jumpers were considered good enough... However, four women were invited to be trial jumpers, and among them Anette Sagen. The Norwegian Skiing Federation was in favor of this, as were the coaches, and also the Vikersund arranging committee for the competition. But yet again the FIS put their foot down. Ski flying was too dangerous for these little girls, as Yggeseth so nicely put it. Anette Sagen was furious, and went head to head with Yggeseth on Norwegian TV. Yggeseth claiming that the worst that could happen would be for one of these little girls falling and injuring themselves during a ski flying jump, potentially jeopardizing the entire girls ski jumping project. Anette Sagen countered saying that it was hopeless to listen to an argument like that, when she knows so well the only reason she’s not being allowed to participate is that she’s not a boy. She’s a better jumper than many of the male Continental Cup jumpers for Pete sake! Following up, she said that ultimately she’d just like to be able to continue to jump without all of this commotion every time! Just about every authority on ski jumping went out against the FIS after this, and the pressure against Yggeseth was mounting. Eventually, they allowed four women to be trial jumpers, Anette Sagen being one of them. And she set a nice personal best at 174.5m during one of her ski flying jumps. One barrier was broken, but many remained. And it’s so crazy to even try to comprehend a lot of this. Here’s a growing group of very talented female ski jumpers who are trying to carve out a space for themselves to compete – I mean, who are they hurting? Yet, the FIS kept opposing this, kept keeping them out of the world cup, the world championships, the Olympics, and ski flying competitions.
And 2004 still wasn’t quite over for Anette Sagen. Because despite her setting a new hill record in the Holmenkollen hill and also trying her first ski-flying jumps after having taken on the FIS management in a ferocious fight for her right to jump, she was still just 19 years old. And that meant she would compete in the FIS junior World Championships. Or, perhaps participate is the most accurate, because the FIS did not allow the girls to properly compete. The FIS Jr championships are held every year and boys and girls from all over the world aged 16 to 20 meet to compete in cross country skiing, Nordic combined, and ski jumping. That is, historically the girls were of course only allowed in the cross country events, where as Nordic combined and ski jumping were reserved for the boys only. In 2004, girls’ ski jumping was still just a trial event, just like it had been for the first time 6 years earlier in St Moritz, and kinda like new sports are trialed or exhibited in the Olympics from time to time. That meant they had their own unofficial competition where they jumped, their jumps were measured and scored for style, they determined a winner, but there was no official recognition of the winner, and of course there was no award ceremony or any medals for the girls. Only the boys got that.. And if you google the event, the women’s competition is not even mentioned in the Wikipedia article from the championships.
The 2004 Jr championships were taking place in Stryn in Norway. And the ski jumping competitions took place on the 90m hill in Stryn, an excellent 90 meter hill where I as a trial jumper for the Norwegian Championship in 1997 jumped 68 meters… Anette Sagen dominated the girls’ competition, jumping 102.5 meters in her first jump, the longest jump of the day boys or girls. In the second round she landed on 99.5meters, and won the girls competition a whopping 27 points ahead of Germany’s Ulrike Gaessler and the American Lindsay Van. So yeah, a tad longer than my modest 68 meters there…
The boys’ competition was won by Mateusz Rutkowski from Poland, and worth noting too is that a very young, and later on legendary Austrian ski jumper, Thomas Morgenstern finished second. But where the boys got their medals and the polish national anthem was played in honor of the winner, Anette Sagen got no medal, no ceremony, and certainly no national anthem was played in her honor. The Norwegian audience in Stryn were so appalled by this that the entire crowd spontaneously started singing the words to “Ja vi elsker”, the Norwegian national anthem. Anette Sagen later said that she was glad she was the one who won the competition, and not the German girl, because she was not sure the Norwegian crowd knew the words to the German national anthem.
Reading this story almost brought tears to my eyes. Because it also illustrated the absurdity in all of this. Anette Sagen jumped further than anyone during this competition, and the girls competed at a very high level. Yet, their results were not counted. And it was up to the Norwegian audience to give the winner her well deserved national anthem.
And 2004 became the definitive breakthrough year for Anette Sagen. With the victory in the FIS Ladies Grand Prix, the fantastic hill record in Holmenkollen, the Jr world championship win, and the new personal best of 174.5 meters as a trial jumper in ski flying she was the by far best female ski jumper of the season. Yet, the absurdity of no medals or award ceremony at the jr championships showed what struggle she and her fellow female ski jumpers were still up against. And adding insult to injury, where the Norwegian male ski jumper Sigurd Pettersen won 200,000 CHF for his victory in the German Austrian four hills tournament, Anette Sagen won a small silver cup and 12 bottles of Slovenian cola for her victory in the Ladies Grand Prix. And Anette didn’t even like cola.
After the 2004 season was over, Anette Sagen was now a celebrity in Norway. Partially for her amazing jumping, but also partially for being the front figure for the women’s struggle to be accepted as ski jumpers. The feminists made her an icon for taking on the patriarchy, and the Norwegian Women’s association vote her the feminist of the year. And with all the attention she got that year her name was the second most mentioned name in the Norwegian press in 2004, only behind politician Erna Solberg, the lady who eventually would go on to become the Norwegian prime minister.
Yet, Anette didn’t necessarily view herself as a feminist, or an activist, or a celebrity for that sake. She was a ski jumper, and all she wanted to do was to jump. And to be recognized as the top athlete she was. With all the same rights as male jumpers who got to participate in the championships, Olympics, and ski flying. She had become an involuntary feminist who became an icon for both her sport and her gender just because she wanted the right to compete. Yet, for all of her struggles in 2004, it had set something in motion. Because as previously mentioned, the following season the FIS at least would allow women to compete in the Continental Cup, which meant that women now had a season long international cup to compete in, and not just a 4 or 5 hill tournament as the case had been for the Ladies Grand Prix.
For the next five years, Anette Sagen dominated the Continental Cup, winning five back to back victories from 2004/05 season and through the 2008/09 season. And as the women’s struggle in ski jumping continued, at least there were a few things in motion.
For the 2009 world championship in Liberic in the Czech Republic, women for the first time in history were allowed to compete! And Lindsay Van of the United States became the first female world champion in ski jumping, with Germany’s Ulrike Graessler winning silver, and Anette Sagen taking the bronze medal. The 2009 was the tail end of Anette’s dominance in the sport. And in many ways you can say that the changes she fought for happened a bit too late for her. In 2012, the women finally got their own world cup tournament. Anette competed in the world cup through the 2014/15 season, however; she was never able to put as much of a mark on it as she had done in the continental cup in the earlier years. The fifth overall place from the 2012/13 season was her best result, in a season where she recorded her only individual world cup competition win in Schonach in Germany.
In 2014 women were finally allowed to compete in the Olympics and Germany’s Carina Vogt became the first female Olympic ski jumper in history. Only 13.3 points was the difference between the winner and number 10. In comparison, there was a 24.6 point difference between number 1 and number 10 in the men’s competition, showing a significantly larger spread. And Anette Sagen, who had been the dominant force in women’s ski jumping for so long and who had fought for the women’s right to compete in the Olympics was not good enough to qualify for the competition. So much for the overall level in women’s ski jumping not being high enough to allow them to compete at the international stage!
And I suppose this is how it often goes, the pioneers may not always be around to reap all the rewards for their work. Anette Sagen retired from ski jumping in 2015, having won the Ladies Grand Prix four times in 2003, 2004, and then in 2006 and 2008. She won the contental cup five times in a row, a record that still stands. She became Norwegian champion a total of 15 times between the large hill and normal hill, and she won bronze in the first world championship where the women were allowed to compete.
Following the renovation and rebuilding of the world famous Holmenkollen ski jump in Oslo in 2010 Anette Sagen was given the honor of being the first jumper to jump off the new hill. But the boys again couldn’t have any of that and they snuck out the night before the official opening of the new Holmenkollen at beat her to it by jumping first. Of course.
This was a super frustrating episode to work on and I hope I did not get too political in expressing my views on the FIS and the way they’ve handled women’s ski jumping up through the years. Because it seemed so unfair that someone who just wanted to compete in her sport had to go through all of this just to be given the chance. And then as I kept researching the story, it became evident that essentially all female ski jumpers up through the years have had to fight for their right to participate and to compete, although few perhaps did it as fiercely as Anette Sagen did. The recent ski jumping star Maren Lundby, she also from Norway, had to take on a similar fight for Women to be allowed to compete in the large hill in the world championships in as recent as 2021! And how cool wasn’t it that she went ahead and won that competition. And as I mentioned earlier in this episode, 2023 marks the first time when women will finally be allowed to compete in ski flying. And I can’t wait to watch it!
I apologize that it took this long to get this episode published. Hopefully it will be a quicker turn around before the next episode of Ski Heroes is available to the very few but loyal listeners I have!
Winter is here and I hope all of you are getting to enjoy some good turns on the mountain wherever in the world you may be. I’m leaving for my annual ski vacation going at the end of this upcoming week and I’ll be skiing 10 days in the swiss alps. I can not wait!
But enough about my skiing plans for now. Thank you very much for listening, and until next time please continue your snow dances!