STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Nordic racer Annie Pokorny has placed ninth in the 2012 NCAA Championships and fourth in the 10K freestyle at U.S. Nationals. She placed on five podiums at the Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association competition, which made her the NCAA’s second-ranked eastern skier. And Annie competed in U23 World Championships in the Czech Republic.

But Pokorny, who came to Sun Valley to train with the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation’s elite Gold Team, has learned that being female complicates being an athlete.

She told 300 people attending the second annual TEDxSunValley talks on Saturday just why in a talk about women, sports and pickle jars.

“Being an athlete makes it 20 percent less likely that I will get cancer than my non-sporting friends,” said the Spokane native who studied at Middlebury College in Vermont

But still, she said, females drop out of sports at an alarming rate as they go from elementary school to middle school and high school, despite the creation of Title IX 45 years ago to prohibit discrimination against women in sports.

Women made up just 34.8 percent of collegiate athletes by 1993, up from 30.5 percent in 1981. And the percentage of female athletes in high school has decreased in some cases.

“I wondered if the culprit lay not in how women were using their bodies but how they were feeling about their bodies,” said Pokorny, who will be among those coaching VAMPS Nordic program for women this year.

What Pokorny found was intriguing. Little boys, for instance, could still throw balls better at a young age, even though their female counterparts were often stronger at that age.

She picked up a pickle jar and illustrated how the difficulty of trying to open it lowers women’s confidence in their abilities and even the expectation that they will be able to open it in the future.

“I experienced the pickle jar phenomenon often in cross country skiing,” said Pokorny, who will turn 25 on Nov. 16.

Women have a fear of taking up space and they’re unable to move into uncharted space because they don’t feel it’s safe, she said. They shorten their strides in running and they shorten their strokes in the pool, rather than use stride and runs that would get them further faster.

Pokorny picked up the pickle jar again and, by getting her torso and the rest of the body into the act, she was able to open it easily.

“It shows we need to think differently about the way we move through space,” she said. “You have to see that space in front of you as yours to take. You have to move into that space before you, take up the space besides you and behind you. Move the way you and your body are made to move and you may find you can do things you thought you couldn’t.”

Pokorny noted that there’s a lot of talk among cross country skiers about falling forward, a technique of falling forward from the ankles as the easiest way to move forward.

“When you really go for it, when you really learn to fall forward, the only direction you can go is forward,” she added.