I think the Canadian public has a very strange relationship with the Canadian women's hockey team. We aren't comfortable with being the vastly dominant nation in a sport. We like to be the underdog, and we like our underdog athletes. The closest that Canada has ever felt to the women's team was when they persevered through bias referees and a hostile crowd in the Salt Lake game. When they dominate weak teams here, we want them to ignore the fact that they've just scored an Olympic goal on home ice, and instead want them to be humble.
Personally, I like don't mind seeing the photos of the girls basking on the ice; the women's gold will not go down as the greatest moment of the games for Canadians (Bilodeau, Rochette, Hughes, and Montgomery are all greater moments, to say nothing of those yet to come), but for these women, it's the greatest moment not just of their Olympics but of their lives. They were in a position where the accolades would be small if they won, and the blame would be huge if they lost. For years, we've been pounding into our athletes that the greatest thing any Canadian could ever achieve is to win Olympic gold on home-soil. And these women have done it.
I don't like the way that the women celebrated, but I also think it's a natural byproduct of the situation that they were put in, and I can allow them this lapse in judgement. I hear pundits like Jungle Jim talking about their responsibility as role-models. Creating good role-models is the responsibility of society, and sometimes that means turning the camera off, to allow someone the time to act like a real person. Don't overlook real transgressions, of course, but no true Canadian would consider a beer, in public, after an Olympic hockey gold to be a real transgression.
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