Hello. White male here voicing my opinion in this never ending debate about whether women deserve equal pay. I wanted to start this off by saying that equal pay on the Freeride World Tour is a good thing. It holds women to a higher standard, it holds snowboarding to a higher standard, and most importantly it holds snowboard women to a higher standard. I know the female athletes and the snowboarders haven't sent as hard in the past, but they are getting better and better every year, and they work hard to get to the FWT level. This needed to happen. The athletes are skiing the same venue, and when it comes down to it, they are all there to do the same thing.
However, The qualification system of FWT is bullshit. Only 6 male skiers, 2 female skier, 2 snowboard men, 2 snowboard women get into the big show from the FWQ. The wildcard spots are reserved for literal legends of the sport, and past FWT athletes. I think that if they are going to pay equally, they need to have an even amount of people competing in all categories. There are 6 Female snowboarders competing on the FWT, and the fact that Marion Hearty is going to win over 5 others, and a Male skier has to beat a stacked field of 23 of the top skiers in the world is absolutely fucked up.
I think a better qualification system would be to have the top eight get to stay on the FWT, and make sure that no 4* competitions happen at the same time as FWT events, allowing FWT athletes to qualify through FWQs. Same way the WSL athletes compete in their respective qualifying series. The FWQ events these days are stacked, and I think that the top 20 people on the FWQ could have a shot at killing it on the FWT.
So yes. I think that FWT having equal pay is a good thing, however, they needed to fix a lot more than just having the pay be equal because shit is fucked.
Also fuck it. FWT is gonna be so sick this year. Hell of a crew competing this year.
**This thread was edited on Jan 16th 2020 at 2:40:05am