New Olympic quota is a ‘mistake, not well thought out’

In the wake of the 2022 Olympic team announcements, Ted Ligety spoke exclusively with Ski Racing Media about the new Olympic quota rules and what it means for top male skiers, particularly the Americans. Ligety will be calling the Games for NBC from Stamford Connecticut, as NBC is no longer sending its announcing team to Beijing. 

On Jan.21, the US Ski Team announced a team of 11 women and six men who will make the trip to Beijing, down from the 22 athletes who competed in PyeongChang. While that means a full contingent of women, for the men, it includes only three speed skiers, three GS skiers (Ryan Cochran-Siegle bridges downhill, super G and GS) and a lone slalom skier. While each country can run up to four athletes in each event, this team size means the Americans will potentially not be able to fill any men’s alpine event.

As described in these previous pieces on Olympic qualification and Olympic quota reallocation, the shrunken team is the consequence of new rules imposed by the IOC, which reduce both the total field size of Alpine athletes and mandate equal numbers of male and female quota spots. For several reasons — including a higher number of one-event specialists among men and an increased number of small nations that are fielding only male skiers — this disproportionately limits top male athletes. 

“I think the whole thing was probably good intentions that, unfortunately, were not well thought out,” says Ligety. “I hope it’s a mistake, and they didn’t really analyze what the numbers would be at the end of the day.”

Notably absent on the U.S. team are speed skiers Jared Goldberg and Steve Nyman, who have scored 48 and 45 World Cup points, respectively, in both downhill and super G this season. Meanwhile, only four of the U.S. women named have scored World Cup points in the single digits this season with two scoring none at all. Any way you look at it, the men were faced with a much higher hurdle to qualify, and because of it, Team USA will be less balanced and less competitive at the Games.

When it comes to gender equity, Ligety notes that ski racing has traditionally been ahead of other sports.

“I would say ski racing is probably one of the most fair sports, male to female, out there,” says Ligety. “There’s still some disparity there, but by and large compared to any other sport, maybe outside of tennis, it wasn’t something that was a glaring issue to begin with.”

The Olympic selection process, which ranks athletes over a two-year period based on two events, also plays into the issue.

“I think it gets exacerbated by the fact that on the female side, there are many, many athletes who are competing at a high level across three different disciplines, which is very beneficial when you look at the quota,” Ligety said. 

Conversely, the men’s side features more specialists, which hurts them in gaining quota spots. The Swiss team, for example, has 13 men and 13 women in the top 30 across all four discreet events — downhill, super G, GS and slalom. Of those, the top four athletes in each event include 10 men and only six women. That means, the Swiss can field their most competitive team with fewer women than men. In a typical year, they would have been able to allocate more of their total quota spots to the top-ranked men to accommodate this, but the new equal quota mandate prevents them from doing so. Even the Swiss, with a full Olympic quota of 11 men and 11 women, are leaving legitimate medal contenders at home.

The U.S. is not alone in feeling the imbalance of this numbers crunch, as evidenced in the reallocation of quota spots after each nation confirmed or refused its initial allotment. Of the three quota spots that were reallocated to men through this process (seven total after Austria’s protest), none were turned down. Meanwhile, 10 nations turned down at least one of the 22 additional quota spots reallocated for women, of which only 17 were ultimately claimed. (The U.S. claimed both of its two reallocated spots for women.) 

Ligety thinks there is room to explore solutions, perhaps by guaranteeing a spot to athletes who reach a certain threshold.

“If you’re top 30 in the world, and your nation doesn’t have four people starting, you should be in there,” says Ligety. “I think that’s one kind of fair way to keep people who are contenders in the mix, and from getting snubbed on spots.”

Another tactic — one employed proactively by some nations for exactly this purpose — is for national federations to be more strategic with the system in place. Staging more Alpine Combined and super G events during the quota qualification window and scheduling them so top athletes can improve their rankings in multiple events helps a country increase its quota. 

It’s unclear why the new limits on quota spots were imposed when the Olympics already hone the field to the four-best skiers from each country.

“I wasn’t aware that it was really that big of an issue,” says Ligety, who thinks it may have been an unnecessary reaction to field size. “At the end of the day, it’s not so bad to have a huge number of racers. I think it wouldn’t be so bad if the Olympics limited the number of people on the second run.”

The reality of ski racing, he points out, is that only 30 people get a second run in the World Cup.

“The need to hold an entirety of a second run becomes much more complicated if you have 100 people running it,” he said. “I think there are other solutions there.” 

What makes the smaller team size even more unfortunate in slalom, where start order is critical, is that the Olympics offer a unique opportunity for athletes who are struggling in the vortex of high World Cup start numbers to launch into the mainstream. With only the four top athletes from each country competing, American athletes like Jett Seymour and Ben Ritchie would enjoy significantly lower start numbers than on the World Cup. 

“I don’t know exactly what constraints they’re trying to fight against,” says Ligety. “I guess that’s the unfortunate and confusing part about it. They’re addressing a problem that I’m not sure really existed.” 

As for the reaction from his former teammates, Ligety says the general tone is one of resignation and disappointment.

“It’s not something they can control or have any ability to change … but these are meaningful life experiences and things that they carry with them for their whole life. To think of how that is being taken away based on decisions over the summer in a boardroom … they’re not angry about it, necessarily, but they’re just disappointed,” says Ligety. “Hopefully it’ll get sorted out after this Olympic cycle.”