OTTAWA, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- The time for allowing women ski jumpers into the Olympics has not come and allowing them in the 2010 Winter Olympics would dilute the medals being handed out to other athletes, International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said Thursday. There are only about 80 women ski jumpers in the world and the sport has not yet reached the IOC's standard for being included in an Olympics, Rogge said at the end of a three-day visit to Canada's Vancouver. "If you have three medals, with 80 athletes competing on a regular basis internationally, the percentage of medal winners is extremely high," Rogge told a news conference. "In any other sport you are speaking about hundreds of thousands, if not tens of millions of athletes, at a very high level, competing for one single medal. We do not want the medals to be diluted and watered down. That is the bottom line." Some Canadian women ski jumpers have argued they are being discriminated against because the IOC won't allow their sport at the Vancouver Olympics. The women took their case to the Canadian Human Rights Commission and they have the support of Helena Guergis, the federal sports minister. Rogge seemed irritated by the suggestion the IOC was discriminating against women. He has no doubts the sport will eventually gain Olympic status. "This is not discrimination," he said sternly. "This is just the respect of essential technical rules that say to become an Olympic sport, a sport must be widely practiced around the world ... and have a big appeal. This is not the case for women's ski jumping so there is no discrimination what so ever. "That will change in the future, we have no doubt about that." Rogge was in Vancouver as part of an IOC Co-ordination Commission visit to review the city's preparation for the 2010 Games. He called the visit "a very productive one" and praised VANOC for having most of the Olympic venues completed two years before the Games.
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