KUSA - After Dateline, be sure to stay tuned for Rock Center with Brian Williams.
Viewers will meet Lindsey Van, not to be confused with Vail's Lindsey Vonn, who is a member of the U.S. women's ski jumping team. She was also the very first women's world champion.
But, Van can't compete in the upcoming Olympics in Sochi. Since the very first winter games back in 1924, only men have been allowed to compete in the ski jump. It's something Van and the rest of the team are fighting to change.
In an ironic twist of fate, when the Olympics came to Van's home state of Utah in 2002, she was stuck in a supporting role.
"I was the test jumper for the men. So they sent me down the hill to make sure it was good for all the men to jump in the Olympics," Van told NBC Rock Center's Kate Snow. " Yeah, it's a little strange. They said, 'Oh yeah, you're not good enough to be here, but you're good enough to test out the hill to see if it's good enough for the men.'"
Over the years, there have been a lot of explanations for why women weren't allowed to jump in the Olympics. In the 1950s, it was believed that a woman's uterus was so delicate that jumping could cause infertility. It's a belief the President of the Ski Federation expressed as recently as 2006.
You can see Kate Snow's full report on Rock Center Friday night at 9 p.m.
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