Golden Fleecing

First off, congratulations to Canada's women's hockey team for their gold medal victory in the Olympics! I was thoroughly impressed with the quality of play in the women's tournament, and was excited to see some other nations (notably Sweden, of course) rise to the level of Canada and the USA in women's hockey. If I had a daughter, I would be very happy that she was growing up in a time when she could look up to female team sports stars as heroes (if they were sportingly inclined), which is certainly something that has been missing for the vast majority of sports history. Of course, there's certainly not parity with men's sports in terms of attention, but at least at the Olympics the women get a chance to shine and the Canadian women's team is deservedly glowing golden today. Way to go!

Now, with that said I can't help but point to the comment section on the Globe & Mail's article about the gold medal game, and in particular, this comment from Jim Terrets from Vancouver:

Well, well, well, thank God the Canadian team ran up the score on those other teams because if it wasn't for the right to have the final line change, they would have surely lost this game. Yes indeed, this tarnished gold was worth embarassing and disrespecting the sport and the opposition. I had hoped the Swedes, with their infectious love and joy for the sport, would pull a shocker and defeat the grim, unhappy, 'we must win at all costs' Canadian team, who are the Darth Vaders of women's hockey. But maybe, just maybe, the Canadian women will reflect on how poorly they conducted themselves in winning this medal, and change their ways for the better. That would be worth its weight in gold.

Unbelieveable. If you know this guy, kick him in the calf for me. (Not really - we shouldn't even joke about making extreme reactions to someone's words) But seriously, I have no idea where this idiot gets his ideas. I was very pleased to see that he gets ripped apart in the comments that followed up his post. Thankfully most Canadians (even ex-pats like me) are rightfully proud of the hard work that the women on this team have put in to reach such an elite level. Negative ninnies like Jim deserve ridicule, while the women's hockey team deserves nothing but praise.

UPDATE: If that's got you down at all, go read this story by Christie Blatchford from the front page of today's G&M.