The wait begins today for a verdict after the two sides in the VANOC gender discrimination trial offer their closing statements in British Columbia Supreme Court.
VANOC's lawyer, George Macintosh, said Thursday “there is going to be zero discrimination” at the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Macintosh made the comment during an exchange with Justice Lauri Ann Fenlon after she challenged him on his contention that VANOC is controlled by the IOC, not governments.
Fifteen women ski jumpers want VANOC deemed government-controlled so that it will adhere to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and compel the IOC to add a single women’s event on the normal hill to the Games schedule.
“Are the plaintiffs not complaining that VANOC, part of what VANOC is doing, is providing government-funded venues... and it is providing that to a Games, a program [they say] discriminates against women?” Fenlon asked.
Macintosh said the complaint is really against the IOC, which made the 2006 decision not to add women’s ski jumping. He said governments act as overseers and do not control the local organizing committee.
“VANOC has always behaved commendably and progressively and will host in a perfectly and proper way,” Macintosh said. He added VANOC “wanted these people here” and feels badly their competition won’t happen.
The IOC, he said, does not discriminate against women. “Far from having erected those barriers, it is the IOC’s mission to dismantle them.”
Macintosh later cited an affidavit by Walter Sieber, a VANOC director and member of the Olympic program commission. Sieber indicated the OPC carefully considered adding women’s ski jumping because of gender equity. It eventually ruled against women’s ski jumping because there would only be one pre-Vancouver 2010 world championship and international participation did not meet IOC criteria.
Special notice however, was given when the executive board said it would “be closely following the development... with a view to its inclusion in future Olympic Games.”
Ross Clark, lawyer for the plaintiffs, noted in his submission earlier in the week that skicross was newer and less popular than ski jumping.
Macintosh denied that the cost of adding a women’s competition was a concern of VANOC.
Outside the court, ski jumper Katie Willis’s mother Jan questioned VANOC’s support. Willis said VANOC Nordic combined and ski jumping manager John Heilig told her in an early January 2008 phone call that if Canadian ski jumpers joined a news conference by American women’s ski jumping advocates “we won’t let you use the facility.”
“He said he got orders,” Willis said. “A shocking comment to hear, but it didn’t seem like it would come from his lips.”
Heilig could not be reached for comment.
With reporting from Bob Mackin in Vancouver.
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