It is finally happening! The subjects of my 2005 documentary, Jump like a Girl – Lindsey Van & Jessica Jerome – as well as other lady ski jumpers will finally be allowed to compete in the 2014 Olympic games in Russia!
Today Jessica took top honors in the women’s division at the U.S. Olympic Trials making her the first U.S. woman to ever qualify for the Olympics in ski jumping. It was such a treat to watch the meet broadcast nationally on NBC!
This is such a different story from the one that I documented from 2001 – 2005 in my film Jump Like a Girl and the blog post I wrote about the women’s continued exclusion around the 2010 games for The Society Pages.
So proud of you ladies. So proud.
Can’t wait to see what you do in Sochi!
As a treat, here is a photo of Lindsey and I from this past summer when she stopped by Seattle to premiere the new documentary about her – Ready to Fly. I was bending over since Lindsey was being all goofy about how short she is.
You can also check out photos from the premiere of Jump like a Girl in 2005 in my Flickr stream. My favorite is of a 10 year-old Sarah Hendrickson, now the 19 year-old current World Champion of Women’s Ski Jumping, showing off one of the JLAG t-shirts I had made to celebrate the completion of my documentary. She’d spent the day getting other ski jumpers who were in town for a competition to sign it.
Enjoy!