Video | Japan's Sara Takanashi breaks new ground in Olympics ski jumping
A favourite to win the race, she aims to be first female ski jump champion in Winter Games history
Japan’s Sara Takanashi is the favourite to make history as the first Olympic women’s ski jumping champion and to cap a long, bruising battle for equality in the sport.
Ski jumping is one of just six sports which have been included in the programme of all of the Olympics since the very first Winter Games took place at Chamonix, France, in 1924.
But before this year, ski jumping and the related sport "nordic combined" remained the last men-only disciplines in the programme.
The International Olympic Committee’s reluctance to open the door had some base in logic as its regulations stipulate that the event must be practiced in at least 35 countries and must have held at least two world championships before being considered for inclusion in the Olympics.
Meanwhile, no women’s competitions in ski jumping were held in the world before 2006, when women began participating in the FIS Continental Cup.