Goodbye, Olympic Women! Thanks for the Inspiration!

This morning I am suffering from a withdrawl of “Olympic” proportions.

I always feel a little sad when the Olympics are over. This year, especially so, since this is the first one that I really watched together with my daughter. She’s now old enough to start to appreciate many of the sports we saw.

She loved seeing ice skating of all kinds: figure skating, speed skating, short track; she also loved to see the snowboarders do their tricks as well as the skiiing events; we even watched curling together! While she was interested in seeing all of the events, she became especially attentive when women were competing.

“Look!” I’d say proudly. “That’s a girl doing that!” (Sometimes it was hard to tell the athlete’s gender through all of the helmets, goggles and gear). She was even more interested then to see a girl really not that much older than her soar through the air, pony tail flying, and achieve a perfect landing or a fast time.

And that’s one of the biggest reasons I’ll miss the Olympics: from skiing and snowboarding, curling to ice hockey, women took part in so many of the events and were awesome at them. I had conversations with friends who said things like, “I didn’t know women played organized hockey! How cool is that?!?” It was great for girls all over the world to see females achieving the same dreams as the boys: to practice for years and develop the strength, courage and confidence to soar high in the air or fly down a mountain or icy track, all competing against others and doing their very best.

I think the Olympics makes a big impression on kids. My daughter has said she wants to try ice skating and snowboarding when she’s big enough. I think the fact that she saw women competing in so many different sports while donning skates made all the difference. Maybe she thought, “If she can do it, I can try!”

Throughout the games, I heard many athletes cite competitors from prior games who served as their inspiration: U.S. Women’s Speedskater Katherine Reutter said hers was former gold medalist Bonnie Blair, Japanese figure skater Mao Asada’s inspiration was former Olympian Midori Ito. Who did Lindsey Vonn inspire this year? Or gold medalist moguls skiier Hannah Kearney? Only time will tell. Perhaps the important thing isn’t the fact that these women inspired future Olympians, but that they might have inspired girls to at least try a new sport and get up and get moving.

And also mentioned was the fact that behind many of the medalists were strong mothers, many of whom for years shuttled their child from practice to practice and traveled to watch every competition. Many of the athletes dedicated their medals to their moms and the sacrifices they made—such as Canada’s Joannie Rochette, whose mother tragically passed away just days before her daughter’s competition, and who her daughter said was one of the main reasons she had made it this far in life. A salute to Olympic moms even came in the form of a Procter and Gamble commercial that aired frequently during the games.

However, there was something missing from this year’s games. While watching men’s ski jumping, my husband asked, “When’s the women’s competition?” But this time, there wasn’t any. While a rule is in place that states any sport that is new to the Olympics must include competitions for both men and women, apparently, that doesn’t apply to existing. Citing a small pool of competitors to draw from, this year there was no women’s ski jumping, to the dismay of jumpers from all over the world. Hopefully, it will return in 2014 along with all of the other sports we witnessed this year, including women’s hockey, which some say may suffer the same fate as ski jumping.

But congratulations to all women who competed! This year’s Olympians—fast, high-flying, strong and graceful—certainly inspired the next generation of athletes as well as us all!