The ‘Floating Baroness’ and the ‘Queen of the Skis’
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12217564 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Annette R Hofmann (0000-0003-4312-1833, Ludwigsburg University of Education, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 247-258 |
| Publication date | 2012-02-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The International Journal of the History of Sport (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0952-3367 • E-ISSN: 1743-9035 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09523367.2012.641217 |
| OpenAlex | W1965518349 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 2 |
Recently women's ski jumping has attracted public attention because a group of female jumpers went to court to fight the IOC decision to exclude them from the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver. After almost nine months in court the jumpers lost their case, and maybe their story will disappear into nowhere again.1 1. For more detailed information see Hofmann et al., ‘Dear Dr. Rogge’, and Vertinsky et al., ‘Skierinas in the Olympics’. Especially before the Olympics it was a worthwhile story for the media to report about. Thus not only the existence of women's ski jumping but also this case of gender discrimination was spread all over the world. For many people not involved in ski sports it was the first time they heard about women's ski jumping. However, ski jumping is not a new sport for women. First sources tell us about ski jumping women in nineteenth-century Norway. Not until the twentieth century do we hear about women performing this sport on the European continent and in North America. Throughout the history of this sport, there were always examples of extraordinary women jumpers. Two of them from different European countries, living in different periods, shall be the focus of this paper. The Austrian Baroness Paula Lamberg (1887–1927) from the famous Austrian ski resort Kitzbühel, and the Norwegian Johanne Kolstad (1913–1997), who reached international fame due to her long jumps in the 1930s. Considering the fact that ski jumping was and still is seen as a male-only sport, the questions arise, who were these women who lived in different parts of the world during different times and managed to receive recognition in a male-dominated sport? What were the social and cultural circumstances that made it possible for them to attain fame at a time in which women's participation in sports was very much restricted? Or were they simply a product of the rising emancipatory currents of the time? After an introduction to the beginnings of women's ski jumping and the arguments opposed to it, this paper tries to find answers to these questions and build a link to the image of the ‘New Women’ in the early twentieth century who also had some impact on women's sports participation
Jumping · Political science · Queen (butterfly · History · Law · Medicine · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports, Gender, and Society · Winter Sports Injuries and Performance
| Citations per year | 0.29 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2012 - 2026 (15) |
| Highly cited | No |