The exuberance of youth, carrying beer and cigars, met the stuffiness of Olympic figureheads, wearing scowls and shaking their fingers at the alleged impropriety of it all.
Yes, that was the scene yesterday in Vancouver after Team Canada defeated Team USA 2-0 in the gold medal women's hockey game. The AP describes it thusly:
More than half an hour after they beat the United States 2-0 on Thursday, the players came back from the locker room and staged a party on ice — swigging from bottles of champagne, guzzling beer and smoking cigars.
In a sport that Canada invented, there was never an option besides gold, and with it finally in hand, the home team let loose.
Meghan Agosta and Marie-Philip Poulin posed wearing goofy grins. Rebecca Johnston actually tried to drive the ice-resurfacing machine. Haley Irwin poured champagne into the mouth of Tessa Bonhomme, gold medals swinging from both their necks.
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."
"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."
Poulin, who scored both goals, doesn't turn 19 — legal drinking age in British Columbia — until next month. The drinking age in Alberta, where the Canadian team trains, is 18. Photos showed Poulin on the ice with a beer in her hand.
