WUNRN
IRAN
TO SEND FIRST FEMALE SKIER TO WINTER GAMES
March
17, 2009
By
Metsa Rahimi for CNN
Fatemeh Kiadarbandsari, competing at last month's World
Ski Championships, in
The chosen competitor will ski in "full Islamic dress,"
Three women Fatemeh Kiadarbandsari, Mitra Kalhor and Marjan Kalhor are
vying for the place on the national team alongside three male skiers, said
Iranian Ski Federation head Isa Saveh-Shemshaki.
Trials for the team will be held in December, two months ahead of the
event.
Skiing is hugely popular in Iran with some of the region's best slopes in
the Zagros Mountains just a two-hour drive from the country's capital Tehran.
At weekends during the seven-month ski season it is common to see long queues
of traffic on routes to resorts.
With a growing ski tourism industry, the price of the sport has steadily
increased. But with fewer social restrictions on the pistes than in other areas
of Iranian life, the sport remains a popular pursuit for the country's youth.
Until recently, many slopes were strictly segregated with men and women
skiing on different sides of the mountain. But while it is still illegal to
travel in the same chair lift or gondola, the country's strict religious laws
are visibly more lax at 3,000 meters.
Current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who faces an election this year, was
forced to back down from an initiative ealry in his current term to encourage
female participation in sport because of criticism from the country's religious
leaders.
One mullah reportedly said that women should not ski because the movement
of their knees looked "more like dancing than sport."
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