[RogerWilco]

Originally Posted by Brad Marsh

I think the problem is that when most of us envision an Olympic Gold Medalist, regardless of the gender, we think of an elite athlete.

With nearly every other Olympic sport in which women compete, the ones winning the medals are elite athletes in every sense of the word. Not so with hockey.

Take any sport you want and I bet the elite women in that sport would completely dominate the "average" male athlete. For example, I'm sure there are a lot of very strong skaters on this forum, perhaps even some that have participated or competed in speed-skating - do you really think many (any?) of them could beat the 37 year old Clara Hughs in a race? Not likely.

I live in the same town that Becky Scott (gold medal winning cross-country skiier) grew up in. A lot of people cross-country ski here at a relatively high level. Becky Scott could beat any one of them and it's not even close - male or female. She is elite in her sport.

Another example. I compete in triathlons and tend to do fairly well in most races - nearly always close to the top of my age group, and have even finished first overall at a race. But when I'm in a race against professional triathletes, the women totally clean my clock. The only ones to beat them are usually the pro men. They are dominant when compared to the "average" athlete, regardless of gender. And most of these professional women would still be at least one tier below athletes making the Olympic team and especially below the ones winning the Olympic medals.

It just isn't the same with hockey. You could piece a team together of beer league players who post on this forum and that team would route the women's national team.

I think that's the problem people have with this - these women just aren't at what the average hockey fan would consider to be an elite level for their sport. Of course it would be unfair for people to critically say that the Olympic Men's team could beat the Women's team, and therefore the Women's team isn't any good at hockey - but that's not what anyone is saying here at all. What people are saying is that most Jr. B teams across small town Alberta could probably beat these Gold Medal Champions. And it's actually happened. There's nothing elite about that.

It's not about being sexist (not sure why that card was even played), and it's not about taking anything away from the Gold Medal - because this team was the best in the world at what they do. And I should add that I was behind them 100% and was thrilled that they won. But at the same time I can understand why people aren't viewing this as some monumental Olympic acheivement.

And with respect to the center-ice celebration, it probably wouldn't be that big of a deal without the context Jiri alluded to earlier in the thread. When you see this team repeatedly celebrate like they just scored the overtime winning goal in the gold medal game, but in reality they just made it 8 or 9 or 10 nothing, something like this center-ice thing just rubs people the wrong way. I'm not sure that what happened here was overly outrageous, and I certainly don't think it warrants an IOC investigation, but I consider it to be classless.

So you think the AVERAGE beer league team could beat a AAA midget team? The Canadian women do at .750