Looking in from the outside, John Furlong looks to me to be a pretty smart guy.

The CEO of the Vancouver Organizing Committee has dodged more than a few bullets (sorry; no pun intended, Vancouverites) in assembling the team that's getting ready to host the world for the 2010 WInter Olympics, which will launch in Vancouver and Whistler only 10 months from now.

That's why I don't get where things stand with the lawsuit women's ski jumpers have filed to force their way into the Games.

I get why they filed it: they've been rebuffed at other, traditional methods to gain Olympic-medal status -- stonewalled by the International Olympic Committee, a still all-too-good-old-boys organization that keeps insisting the sport is not yet ready for prime time.

But I don't get why smart people at VANOC, or by extension its stodgy grandfather, the IOC, ever let it get this far.

Here are the facts: Women's ski jumping is ready for prime time. The international field of competitors ranges between 150 and 200, depending on how you define "world class." It has cracked the glass ceiling of the international ski federation and hosted its own World Championship. It does, in fact, have more valid competitors today than other sports, such as women's ski-cross, had when the door was opened to them by the IOC.

Its inclusion in the Olympics seems inevitable. Ski jumping is an original Winter Olympic sport, dating to the first Games in Chamonix in 1924. And today, it (as well as Nordic combined, a cross-country ski/ski jump sport that also requires ski jumping) are the only winter sports competed by men, and not women. For an organization that purports to be about inclusion and fairness, fixing this historic inequity is long overdue.

My guess is that the IOC's primary reason for denying its entrance in time for the Vancouver Games is that the IOC doesn't like to be told what to do, or when -- not by anybody, including VANOC, and certainly not by a group of pesky women ski jumpers.

That's fine, and it's expected. But what continues to amaze me is how VANOC and the IOC fail to recognize the grand opportunity that's been gift-wrapped and placed right before them. After five days of testimony in a Vancouver courtroom, nobody produced any valid reasons why women shouldn't compete in the Olympics.

The best argument I've heard is one I've often made myself: The costs of hosting a modern Olympics already are prohibitive for host citites. Any move to make the Games bigger only adds to that cost.

But ski jumping is an exception. Ski jump venues already are likely the costliest buy in the athlete-per-dollar equation. The Games already have footed the exhorbitant bills for a ski jump used by men. Why not open it to women and double the bang for the buck?

That leaves you with no good argument at all, outside the aforementioned control-freak aspect.

The rest of it is just politics. The IOC claims Canadian courts have no jurisdiction over their affairs. But the Canadian court, with a clear Rights and Charters language prohibiting gender-based discrimination, might see it otherwise (the court did, after all, refuse motions to dismiss, and let the case be heard.) Clearly, IOC members fear a precedent here -- establishment of a sue-us-and-you-get-in message delivered to other would-be medal events.

But the opposite side of that sword could cut even deeper: Does the IOC really want established case law proving that the laws of a host nation indeed can dictate what sports it puts on the field of play?

It's hard to say which would be worse. But it shouldn't matter. Because common sense dictates that the IOC should preclude the possibility of either by doing the right thing in the coming weeks, before B.C. Supreme Court Justice Lauri Ann Fenlon issues a decision on the merits of the lawsuit.

You get the sense that VANOC, if it was up to them, would just let the women fly. They have, after all, provided all sorts of logistical support for female jumpers already -- arguably to help them prepare to jump in Sochi in 2014, by which time the IOC will have come to its senses. And, like any good host committee, they are mortally afraid of offending the grand poobahs of the IOC -- even if doing so would be the right thing to do. It's a line that simply doesn't get crossed.

So here's an idea: Some smart, politically savvy person at VANOC -- Furlong, maybe -- should be working the phones with some other smart, politically savvy Canadians with top-level IOC connections. Someone like, say, Dick Pound, who, let's face it, needs to redeem himself for warning the women jumpers that filing a lawsuit would merely tick off everyone at IOC headquarters in Switzerland, and do more harm than good.

Pound could make a sudden, unscheduled vacation stop in Lausanne, sit down by a fire along Lake Geneva with IOC head Jacques Rogge, sip some single malt, light up a Cuban, and lay it all out:

"Look, J.R. Between you and me. We know it's bad policy to let people push their way into the Olympics. But it's time to take the off ramp here. What if the IOC, suddenly, before any court decision, saw the light and ordered VANOC to put women's jumping on the schedule? Alll they'd have to do is come up with a few more rooms, and a day on the calendar. Some people at VANOC have quietly assured me it can be done."

"It's the Canadian way. And it should be the Olympic Way. And besides: Can you imagine the TV coverage? DIck Ebersol would never stop wetting himself."At which point Rogge just might think it over, and do the right thing. And the rest would be history. Women's ski jumping would go from headache to feel-good-story of the Olympics, overnight.

But, like any historical development, the momentum has to start somewhere. Maybe with John Fulong. He's in no position, officially, to do any of this.

But like I said, he's a smart guy. Smart enough to see that Vancouver could use the dicey women's ski jump issue to truly leave its mark on the Winter Games. In historic fashion.