U of A PhD student to advocate for inclusion in sport on an international stage

Charlotte Mitchell poses with a ski jumping ski at the University of Alberta Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation. Image supplied.

Imagine racing down a ski jump at 80 kilometres an hour, then in a split second, you’re flying through the air. “It’s a spectacular feeling of flying,” says Charlotte Mitchell, a sport history PhD student at the University of Alberta Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation. “And when you have a good jump, it’s pretty incredible to fly down to the bottom.”

A former elite athlete in ski jumping, Mitchell completed her bachelor’s degree in cultural anthropology and women’s studies at the University of Calgary in 2019 and her master’s degree in gender and social justice at the U of A in 2022. She is a member of the KSR Ski Like a Girl research team, where she explores the rich history of women’s ski jumping dating back to the late 1800s. Her PhD thesis focuses on capturing the voices of Canadian women in ski jumping at Canada Olympic Park in Calgary, a legacy facility of the 1988 Olympic Winter Games. 

“I’m looking at a mixed method study using archival research and oral history interviews to capture and solidify those women’s experiences,” says Mitchell. “I’m also really interested in looking at ski jumping venues, gendered landscapes and the importance of these kinds of facilities.” 

In March 2024, her first peer-reviewed article, Carving Out Spaces of Resistance: Remembering Women’s Ski Jumping, Gendered Spaces, and Built Environments at Canada Olympic Park, 1987-2019, was published in Sport History Review. In it, Mitchell talks about how the Canada Olympic Park ski jumps were built just for men, as there was no event for women until 2014, and how women had to find their place at Canada’s only full-time ski jumping training facility. “It combines archival research with my personal reflections and experience in ski jumping,” says Mitchell.

Growing up in Calgary, Mitchell and her family spent many hours at Canada Olympic Park, forming lifelong friendships. Like her brother Eric, who competed on the Canadian men’s ski jumping team in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, it’s where she was first drawn to the sport. 

As a teenager, Mitchell trained with the women’s national ski jumping team and competed internationally. She had dreams of competing in the Olympics, but women were excluded from having an Olympic ski jumping event. Determined to challenge the inequity, Mitchell joined a lawsuit against the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee in protest of a men’s-only Olympic event. 

While the presiding judge acknowledged that the International Olympic Committee discriminated against women ski jumpers, she ruled that Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms did not have jurisdiction over an international organization. 

But the fight wasn’t over. In 2011, thanks to Mitchell and the other ski jumpers who sued and advocated for the sport, women’s ski jumping became an event at the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Coinciding with this year’s Olympic Summer Games, the Association Familiale Pierre de Coubertin will host the Paris 2024 Olympics Conferences on Empowering Action. The conferences will cover inclusivity in sports, sustainability, and peace through sports and Olympic values. Pierre de Coubertin, known as the father of the modern Olympic Games, inspired his descendants to continue to promote his beliefs in education, sports and moral excellence.

The conferences aim to foster a dialogue on the power of sports to drive social change and promote inclusivity, amplify voices that challenge societal norms and provide a platform for sharing inspirational stories and groundbreaking research that reshape our understanding of gender, space and representation in sport.

Mitchell’s academic background, history of advocacy for women in sport and passion for equity, diversity and inclusion made her a perfect fit to represent the U of A as a keynote speaker for Day 1’s conference — Empowering Action for Inclusive Sports: Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges.

“It’s an exciting opportunity that really aligns with the research I’m doing, advocating for women in sport and the Olympics, and the work of the Association Familiale Pierre de Coubertin,” says Mitchell. 

“I’ll be speaking about my research, which focuses on my past experiences as well as what I’m doing today,” says Mitchell. “I’ll address the challenges and pushbacks we faced trying to get women’s ski jumping into the Olympic Winter Games and eventually taking that to court in Vancouver, as well as the power of the Olympic movement and sport to be political and to advocate for social change.”

“Sport historian Douglas Brown calls on Olympic athletes to be political social activists and I feel my work is accepting that call — to use the principles of Olympism to advocate for change, to call out and encourage the IOC to continue the work of social and gender equality,” says Mitchell.

“I hope my talk will keep the conversation alive about women’s ski jumping, not only in Canada but internationally,” adds Mitchell. “And continue the push for gender equality in sport because it’s still something women are fighting for across the globe. I hope my story will contribute to the rich discussions at the conference and push the IOC to do better for all athletes.”