IOC to probe women at Olympic hockey game
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know by now that Canada’s women’s hockey team kicked ass at the Olympics yesterday. Claiming a 2-0 victory over Team USA, Canada’s women’s team took their third gold medal in as many Olympics.
But it seems that half an hour after the fans had left the arena, the locker room party spilled onto the ice and some of the women were spotted drinking beer (gasp!) and champagne (double gasp!) and smoking cigars (triple gasp!) on the ice while still kitted out in their team uniforms and wearing their gold medals. But the biggest shock is that Marie-Philip Poulin was apparently spotted taking part and she’s only eighteen (infinity gasp!!1!1eleven!!!).
Are you still with me? Do you need some smelling salts? Ok, carrying on…
The IOC’s executive director of the Olympic games, Gilbert Felli, after being tipped off by an AP reporter has launched an investigation into this behaviour and is quoted as saying:
“…that is not good. It is not what we want to see. I don’t think it’s a good promotion of sport values. If they celebrate in the changing room, that’s one thing, but not in public.”
“We will investigate what happened. … We will first find the facts and then act accordingly.”
Sucked into this “investigation” are the International Ice Hockey Federation, the Canadian Olympic Committee and Hockey Canada.
Hockey Canada‘s response last night was
“The members of Team Canada apologize if their on-ice celebrations, after fans had left the building, have offended anyone.”
“In the excitement of the moment, the celebration left the confines of our dressing room and shouldn’t have. The team regrets that its gold-medal celebration may have caused the IOC or COC any embarrassment.
“Our players and team vow to uphold the values of the Olympics moving forward and view this situation as a learning experience.”
Which I really think can be best summed up as “meh, our bad” and a possible “get a life, Gilbert”.
Oh, and for those going “but an eighteen-year old was drinking and BC’s age of majority is nineteen!” — she’ll be nineteen next month.
And she’s of legal age where she lives.
And she scored two points in the first round of the game.
Did I mention that we won by two points? I’m willing to cut her a bit of slack.
Trashee mentioned this in his week’s summary.
AKA Keeper of Maps, I'm a geocacher who lives in Ottawa, Canada.
Just wondering: Would the ICO be as upset about this if Molson wasn’t prominently displayed in the photos?
I took a look at a couple of the photos and what’s visible is a white can with a maple leaf and the word CANADIAN under it. Canadians would recognize the product, but it’s not like there’s a giant MOLSON there, at least not in the pictures I’ve seen.
Would this be as big of a deal if it were the men’s team and not the women’s team?
At 14 I had a beer in a restaurant with my parents in Vancouver. Living on my own, I used to drink at 17 when I lived in Chilliwack. Hell, I never got carded in BC until I was 21. British Columbians just don’t care as long as you’re not making an ass of yourself… like, say, sniveling about someone’s gold-medal celebration.
This “news” is worthy of being called “Bullshit”… I wish the puritan jackasses that bring this crap up would go crawl back under their 17th century rocks and leave the rest of the world alone.
I hope whoever reported this pseudo-incident is burned at the stake of public opinion.
Apparently, it was an AP reporter who called up Felli and asked if he knew about what was going on. Having dealt with more than one reporter, I understand their desire to break a story, but this is a bit much. The reporter will be lucky not to find himself/herself pilloried for their muck raking.
Man, I have to use the audio play on some of these captchas.
Ok, I have a new captcha. Better?
Much! and it works too.