The recent summertime decision of a British Supreme Court Justice that women ski jumpers will not be allowed to compete in the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, was greeted with many protestations of "tea and sympathy," or rather "beaver tails and sympathy," in a nod to its Canadian hosts. Even the Justice exuded solidarity. In her written opinion, Justice Lauri Ann Fenlon said, "The IOC (International Olympic Committee) made a decision that discriminates against the plaintiffs. Only the IOC can alleviate that discrimination by including an Olympics ski jumping event for women in the 2010 games."

And so the wait to allow women the opportunity to climb the Olympics mountain in order to fly off it alongside men goes on. 

Needless to say, the fifteen women who sued the Vancouver Olympics Organizing Committee on the grounds that it was obligated to enforce the gender equality sections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, were disappointed.  But like most athletes, they knew they could lose.  And sports has ready-made cliches for the occasion, which were trotted out afterwards. Said one spokesperson for the ski jumpers, " We are considering it a moral victory."

In sport, we often use the term moral victory to signify a kind of David v. Goliath game where the vastly stronger Goliaths, armed as they are with their wealth and their resources are humbled by the resource poor and weaker Davids on the field.

But mind you, the Goliaths are not beaten. They are just unprepared for the ferocity or the resolve of the weaker team. The Goliaths are still on top.

It is high time that we retire some of the worn cliches of sport, like moral victory.  Many of them do not serve athletes they are supposed to protect, and certainly do not give them their rights or freedoms.

More importantly, we need to create new forms of protest to change the governing powers that be at the IOC, and to retire the many worn cliches they use to wrap themselves in the language of Olympic ideals. 

At the end of the jump and at the bottom of the mountain the real Olympics ideal would simply be when athletes themselves actually have power and a say in the Olympic movement.

That would be a real moral victory.