Olympic Boos? Not in Canada

Apparently I’m not the only one missing the Olympics. All over the net, I’m running into blogs and articles and posts about the amazing two weeks here, and I’m not even out looking for them. They just seem to turn up.

One thing I’ve seen a couple of times is major kudos to Canadians for being so warm, friendly, welcoming and being such good sports even when we were booing the US hockey team. At first I didn’t know what they were talking about. I watched every minute of the final game, and I didn’t hear any booing. And then I realiized. Most of you have probabaly heard the explanation by now, but since I’m still seeing comments about it online, clearly not everyone has.

If you hear anyone mention the booing, pass it on. Roberto Luongo, goalie extraordinaire, was not only the gold medal goaltender for Team Canada, but he’s also the number one netminder for the Vancouver Canucks. And his nickname is Bobby Lu. Every single time that man touches the puck, especially if he happens to be making a spectacular save at the time, the crowd yells, “LUUUUUUUUUUUU.” Which, admittedly, sounds very much like we’re booing the opposition for having a good scoring chance. But no. We’re just acknowledging our goalie for stopping it. Watch a Canucks home game sometime and you’ll see what I mean.

The video quality’s terrible here, but you can hear a little of it during a shutout celebration: