Earlier than she gained 82 World Cup races and 20 World Cup crystal globes, American ski racer Lindsey Vonn gained a silver medal in downhill and a bronze medal in large slalom on the 2004 FIS Junior World Ski Championships in Maribor, Slovenia (racing again then as Lindsey Kildow). That 12 months, the U.S. bested ski-racing powerhouse Austria to win the Marc Hodler Award, given to the highest nation on the Junior Worlds. (Jeffrey Harrison, Ted Ligety, and Julia Mancuso additionally medaled on the 2004 occasion.)
One of the vital influential ski racers of all time, Vonn understands the significance of selling ladies within the sport of ski racing. She based the Lindsey Vonn Basis, which permits ladies to pursue their private and athletic targets by providing scholarships and mentorship applications throughout sports activities for each athletics and enrichment actions. Since its inception in 2015, Vonn’s basis has distributed 356 scholarships totaling greater than $1 million to ladies in sports activities.
Vonn weighed in on final week’s social media brouhaha across the ladies’s tech races on the 2024 Junior World Ski Championships not being livestreamed whereas each males’s tech races had been. Lack of livestreams for ladies’s tech races at Junior Worlds ignites social media.
We contacted Vonn, who was snowboarding in St. Moritz, Switzerland, to get her take.
Ski Racing: What did you make of the dust-up across the ladies’s tech races not being livestreamed on the Junior World Ski Championships, and the way does this kind of factor have an effect on ladies ski racers?
Lindsey Vonn: I feel it was a detrimental oversight and despatched the fallacious message to younger ladies. There have been completely different venues for women and men and limitations, assuming financial, on which venue bought the digital camera crew. I perceive their constraints, but when they’d the intention of airing all races beforehand, they might have organized the races in a manner that will have made it attainable to stream each genders.
SR: We interviewed Nice Britain World Cup ski racer Charlie Visitor concerning the assertion from the FIS and the French Federation and she or he didn’t assume both went far sufficient. Do you consider FIS ought to make it a requirement that gender-equitable TV protection (or livestreaming on YouTube) is a requirement to host JWSC?
LV: I messaged with Charlie as effectively, and I don’t assume FIS went far sufficient in its assertion. Nonetheless, requiring JWSC to livestream all races will most probably restrict an already small pool of resorts that wish to host these races. There must be a transparent mandate that if there are races livestreamed, then it should be each genders. There must also be an effort made by FIS to assist the LOC stream the races. I do consider that though FIS didn’t go far sufficient in its assertion, it should be acknowledged that FIS has its palms tied in deciding what races get streamed. The LOC is liable for that, and possibly that should change.
SR: Do you assume FIS is doing sufficient for gender fairness in ski racing?
LV: I feel FIS does much more good than individuals understand, however on this particular difficulty at JWSC the FIS must take a stronger stance. The message must be clear: We assist all athletes. Interval.
