The Brotherhood of the Leaf

Posted By The Cigar Soldier on March 3, 2010

The final medals were awarded on Sunday as the 2010 Winter Olympics from Vancouver came to a close.  I don’t know about you guys, but I get drawn into the games and find myself watching hour after of hour of shit I would normally never stay seated on the couch to suffer through.  I have to admit that I am hooked on Curling and watch those matches even if the teams are from countries I can’t spell let alone find on a map.  Bowling and sweeping, the perfect couples sport.  There were some great moments in this years games but I’m sure you know the highlight I’m most likely to address.  Yep, the Canadian women’s hockey team.  Which on a side bar, how huge is wining Gold in both mens and women’s hocky?  I mean it’s friggin Canada and this is it’s national past time so unless you’re a Montreal Allouetes fan, this is the biggest thing to hit the provinces since Joseph-Armand Bombardier invented the snowmobile.  Okay, back to hockey. 

 After defeating the United States 2-0, the Canadian women took home their third straight Olympic gold medal.  The drama came well after the medal ceremony when the crowds had left and a number of players came back onto the ice to celebrate this once in a lifetime moment.  According to AP reports, 14 players returned to the rink and toasted their win with bottles of champagne and cans of beer while others enjoyed cigars.  The IOC obviously was not pleased with the events and claimed it was not a good promotion of sport values.  I can understand the outrage over one of the players being underage and I can sympathize with the fact that it’s the Olympics and so much more is expected of these athletes than in the professional sports world, but this made news only because they were woman athletes.  Take  a look at a few key facts here, the crowd had already left so this display was not done in front of or for the fans.  They didn’t pull a Brandi Chastain and rip off their tops immediately following the win showcasing some athletically defined you know whats to all the ogling men in the stands.  The simply got caught up in the moment of reaching the highest pinnacle of achievement in their sport and let loose a little bit. 

The team of course never intended for their actions to cause a stir because they never intended that a celebration held amongst themselves, which has been repeated thousands of times before, would become front page news.  Was it the champagne and the beer?  Possibly.  I guess we don’t think that it’s very lady like to guzzle a cold one and spritz the bubbly around the locker room.  I think what really set off some people was when the gals lit up.  How could young women succumb to the vile tobacco weed?  What would make them smoke a cigar as part of their celebration for winning gold?  Was it possibly that damn near every other team that has won a championship has done the same thing for as long as sport has existed?  It doesn’t matter what sport we’re talking about either.  Think back to every World Series or Super Bowl Victory party, we anxiously wait for TV reporters to barge into locker rooms only to try and conduct interviews through a typhoon of spraying champagne and cloud of cigar smoke.  No  big deal right?  Boys will be boys and after a triumphant season it only seems fitting.  So why was this one an issue?

Because women aren’t supposed to smoke cigars and enjoy life!  Give me another reason if that’s not it.  How the hell can you justify a mens baseball team, the entire team, doing the same thing right on the field in front of thousands of fans and in front of hundreds of children no less.  What makes those actions any less despicable than a couple of gals enjoying a puro and a Molson?  It just caught me off guard a bit when after all the rhetoric about equality it seems the public really isn’t ready for it after all if something like this made the hair on the back of your neck stand up.  Women in growing numbers are enjoying cigars and pipe smoking for the same reasons men have taken to these vices.  And that my friends is a good thing.  Unfortunately public perception hasn’t embraced the face of a female hidden behind a Calabash or a Churchill yet so they still have a way to go.  There is nothing sexier than a gal that knows more about cigars than I do.

It was a great moment in sports for these young women and I think it was wonderful that they chose to celebrate with team mates the same way their male counterparts do.  The fun police and political correctness Nazi’s have put such a damper on spontaneous  celebrations such as these for fear of backlash from some highly funded anti-smoking organization making waves about inappropriate behavior not becoming role models of their stature.  WTF!  Mr. Basketball is famous for not only his hoops ability but also for being an avid cigar smoker.  No one had a problem with that.  What little kid growing up did not want to be Michael Jordan?  Every kid begged for a pair or Air Jordan’s in the hopes that those special shoes just might make their game a little better.  News Flash!  He celebrated numerous NBA Championships with cigar in hand and was still literally the “face” of professional basketball.  Have we come so far that this type of behavior is shunned or was this because we have a separate set of standards for male and female athletes?  Likely a bit of both but they had a cigar and a drink, they didn’t gut a goat at center ice and sacrifice it’s entrails to Sindey Crosby.  I guess it was okay for MJ but not okay for Meghan Agosta.

I extend an open invite to all the women hockey players to come to our Cigar Nights and enjoy a smoke on me.  I think cigars are a perfect way to celebrate any kind of victory whether in the locker room or the boardroom.  Plus hot chicks with cigars are awesome.  Sorry, I’m still a pig and you knew it was coming.

The Cigar soldier

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