Allowing women ski jumpers into the 2010 Winter Olympics would diminish the value of the medals being handed out to other athletes, Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, said on 28 February in Vancouver.

Rogge said 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.

"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 wrapping up a three-day visit to Vancouver.

"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."

"This is not discrimination," Rogge told the press. "This is just the respect of essential technical rules that say to become an Olympic sport, a sport must be widely practised 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."