After the Canadian women’s hockey team won Olympic gold on Feb. 25 they did what came nat­u­rally, they celebrated.

Smokin’ sto­gies, sip­pin’ bub­bly and hors­ing around on the Zamboni machine in vic­tory cel­e­bra­tion had major con­se­quences though.

The International Olympic Committee was less than pleased with the team’s antics. In an inter­view with the asso­ci­ated press, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the games Gilbert Felli said, “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.”

I have a bone to pick with this whole ordeal. These cham­pi­ons were cel­e­brat­ing a (poten­tially) once in a life­time event, win­ning a gold metal! Many ath­letes party hard after an achieve­ment like this and the women’s hockey team being sin­gled out and scolded is unfair. I can’t help but won­der if it were a men’s hockey team if the reper­cus­sions for their post-gold horse­play would have been as severe.

To be clear, the team did not crack cham­pagne on the Olympic podium. They waited for over an hour for the arena to clear out a bit and then cel­e­brated in the way they wanted. Not unlike Gold-winning skele­ton racer Jon Montgomery, these ath­letes’ cel­e­bra­tion was caught on cam­era. No one wanted to run an inves­ti­ga­tion into Montgomery’s par­ty­ing agenda though.

I won­der what kind of “pro­mo­tion on sport val­ues” is being por­trayed when male Stanley Cup win­ners guz­zle cham­pagne from the top of the tro­phy. It is a long-standing tra­di­tion for the win­ning team to drink bub­bly from the top bowl.

Maybe if the group in ques­tion was a team of gym­nasts or a group of fig­ure skaters this type of cel­e­bra­tion would be unchar­ac­ter­is­tic of their sport. Hockey is known as a rugged, intense game and is also one asso­ci­ated with big whoop­ing par­ties! I hardly think the Canadian team’s antics were unsports­man­like, espe­cially when con­sid­er­ing the sport in question.

Thankfully, the threat of inves­ti­ga­tion has been called off, though the team did spend a large part of the fol­low­ing Friday apol­o­giz­ing for their exuberance.

An apol­ogy was hardly war­ranted though. These Olympic cham­pi­ons were cel­e­brat­ing a great vic­tory in a man­ner that is stan­dard for their sport. Their horse­play was in the spirit of joy and cel­e­bra­tion and is not some­thing they should be made to apol­o­gize for.

I say, party on ladies! Party on because you have earned it.

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