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This Is a Gold Medal Celebration

Feb 26, 2010, 2:45 PM UTC

I know that Shanoff linked to this already, and I know that we have a story about it on the Olympics page of SportingNews.com, but this is a sports blog. Isn’t it our civic responsibility to post pictures of female hockey players celebrating a gold medal victory with beer and cigars?â†µâ†µUpside-down?â†µ

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â†µThe Canadian women's hockey team defeated Team USA in the gold medal match in Vancouver, and more than half an hour after the game ended, they came back onto the ice to celebrate some more. Some players were swigging beers, some smoking stogies and others downing copious amounts of champagne. One of the players, Rebecca Johnston, even tried to drive the Zamboni. Per the AP, the fuddy-duddies at the IOC weren't amused:â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥The celebration raised eyebrows at the IOC, which said it would look into the matter. Informed of the antics by The Associated Press, Gilbert Felli, the IOC’s executive director of the Olympic Games, said it was “not what we want to see.”â†µâ‡¥â†µâ‡¥“I don’t think it’s a good promotion of sport values,” he said. “If they celebrate in the changing room, that’s one thing, but not in public. We will investigate what happened.”â†µâ‡¥

â†µâ†µThe report says that the stadium was empty and they were asked to go back onto the ice to take a team picture. They sure did! Now, Marie-Philip Poulin, who scored both goals to defeat the United States, is only 18 years old, and was photographed with a beer in her hand. The legal drinking age, while 18 where the team trains in Alberta, is 19 in British Columbia. So clearly she should be thrown in jail and her goals revoked and the team disqualified, giving the gold to the U.S. Or the IOC should just understand the team just won a gold medal and let them have some fun with this. One of those.â†µâ†µSteve Keough, a spokesman for the Canadian Olympic Committee, said don’t blame them, but don’t blame the players either.â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥“In terms of the actual celebration, it’s not exactly something uncommon in Canada,” he said.â†µâ†µSo IOC, let’s not overreact. Stuff like this makes the Olympics cool.â†µ

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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