PARK CITY — It was an unlikely setting for a momentous moment in the revolution. The weather was shirtsleeve balmy, there was no snow, and this most definitely was not Scandinavia.

But ski jumping nonetheless took a giant step for womankind when it was announced this past Friday night on Park City's Main Street that the United States Ski and Snowboard Association has thrown its support behind the movement to include women ski jumpers in the next world championships in 2007 and the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

"This is incredible news," said DeeDee Corradini, the former Salt Lake City mayor and current Park City resident who has helped drive a grass-roots movement to bring women's ski jumping into the traditional winter sports fold.

"Women have been jumping since 1911," said Corradini, "it's not like they just started."

It's high time they got full rights and privileges.

Friday's announcement at Robert Redford's Zoom Restaurant came on the eve of the 3rd annual Prudential Real Estate International Continental ski jumping AutumnFest, an event that, besides having the sports world's longest title, features what the Olympics doesn't: men and women jumpers at the same meet. About 60 of the world's best men jumpers and 30 of the world's best women jumpers are competing throughout the weekend at the Utah Olympic Park jumps, where water is sprayed on the synthetic surface to make conditions at least a facsimile of wintertime.

Corradini works for Prudential — retired mayors don't just fade away, they sell real estate — and it was through Prudential that she learned of the inequality facing women jumpers.

"It's just so unfair," she said. "I wanted to help."

Dozens of supporters joined the former mayor for Friday's announcement party, which featured a showing of "Jump Like a Girl," a documentary film about women's ski jumping. The film's directors, Jessica Matthews and Ruth Gregory, were on hand to answer questions about their project, which Gregory used as her master's thesis at Ohio University, where she majored in Film and Women Studies.

The filmmakers traveled throughout North America and Europe where, Gregory said, "We gained a terrific respect for what these women do."

If the International Ski Federation bows to the pressure of the USSA and others and sanctions women jumpers for the world championships and Olympics, it will dismantle one of the final fences of gender prejudice in Olympic winter sports competitions. Slowly but surely since the Winter Games began in Chamonix in 1924, sanctions against women purely because they are women have faded away.

Sometimes, as with ski jumping, the battles have been long and protracted. Other times, the barriers have disappeared because of more practical reasons. In the 1960 Winter Games in Squaw Valley, Calif., for instance, women speedskaters were allowed to compete in the Olympics for the first time chiefly because Squaw Valley didn't have a bobsled track and needed more competitions to round out its program.

The only two Winter Olympic events left with a sex barrier are Nordic combined (a combination event involving both ski jumping and cross-country skiing) and ski jumping.

"There should be no barriers at all," said Bill Johnson, a Park City-ite who has joined Corradini in the crusade. "Women should jump in the Olympics. It doesn't make any sense why they shouldn't."