PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA—If this column offends anybody, apologies in advance. On Thursday here in Pyeongchang, the United States women’s hockey team defeated Canada in the gold-medal final. Great game. And after she was given her silver medal, Canada’s Jocelyne Larocque took the medal off and held it in her hand.

Which was fine! Or it should have been fine. The game was so emotional, which is part of what made it great. Larocque could not stand the feeling of silver around her neck. It was an honest moment.

Friday, she . . . apologized?

“I want to apologize to the IOC, IIHF, the Pyeongchang Olympic Organizing Committee, Canadian Olympic Committee, Hockey Canada and most especially to my teammates and our fans for removing my silver medal after it was presented to me,” said Larocque in a statement released by Hockey Canada. “In the moment, I was disappointed with the outcome of the game, and my emotions got the better of me.”

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Oh, for goodness sakes. Look, we all know Hockey Canada has high standards. And yes, we are a long way into these Olympics, and people get punchy as the thing rolls on. There have been a lot of late nights and early mornings and potato chips for lunch. So many nations, so many buses, so many hot dogs served without a bun. We are all very tired here. It’s the best, but everyone is more or less ready to go home.

(Don’t even get me started on the francophone hockey player controversy over pronouncing their names with a French accent, by the way. They’ve been Derek Roy, rhymes with Toy, and Rene Bourque, rhymes with Pork, for a long time now.)

But Larocque didn’t huck it into the crowd or anything which, since the medals are heavy, could have hurt somebody. Sven Kramer of the Netherlands, the great long-track speed skater who was defeated by Canada’s Ted-Jan Bloemen in his precious 10,000, was given a 20-kilo weight at Holland House as a traditional prize for winning bronze in the men’s team pursuit, and in an ill-tempered, childish moment he and his teammate threw it into the crowd, sending two visitors to hospital. Kramer had to apologize in a news conference. Idiot.

But this is not that. This is not even Swedish world juniors captain Lias Andersson chucking his silver into the crowd in Buffalo earlier this year. C’mon now. Larocque stood there for all that time after the game ended in a shootout, put the medal in her hand, listened to the American anthem, tried not to cry. That’s a pretty poor version of poor sportsmanship.

“For all fans, young and old, please understand this was a moment in time that I truly wish I could take back,” Larocque said in the statement. “I take seriously being a role model to young girls and representing our country. My actions did not demonstrate the values our team, myself and my family live and for that I am truly sorry.”

She played nearly 31 minutes, second on the team, with everything she had. Losing killed her. Sportsmanship and grace is cool, but that’s OK too, kids.

Anyway, Canada now has its most ever medals at a Winter Games with 27, surpassing 26 in Vancouver, and a lifetime ago Canada opened this Olympics with an apology for something that an unnamed Canadian coach may have said to an unnamed Russian coach in the Olympic cafeteria, according to the Russians. It was presumably over the whole state-sponsored doping program that Russia ran for years, completely undermining the already threadbare idea that an Olympics is anything approaching a clean competition. You know, that thing.

On Thursday, after initial resistance, the Russians moved quickly to admit guilt after their mixed curling bronze medallist tested positive for meldonium. Alexander Krushelnytsky waived his right to an appeal, returned the medal and left the Games. The Russian Olympic Committee paid the $15-million (U.S.) fine, which goes to anti-doping efforts. Speeding ticket, basically.

It now seems very likely Russia will get its flag and colours back at the closing ceremony, as we suspected all along. (Though a second Russian athlete, a 12th-place bobsledder, has also tested positive.) You know who hasn’t apologized for subverting not just multiple Olympics but multiple Paralympics, and while we’re at it the World University Games? Russia. RUSADA, the Russian anti-doping agency, is still not certified by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Welcome back, guys!

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I am reminded of 2010, when a bunch of Canadian women’s players celebrated their gold medal by drinking beers and smoking cigars on the ice after most people had left. This led then-International Olympic Committee executive director Gilbert Felli to say, “If that’s the case, that is not good. 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.”

Cripes, was Felli a highfalutin fellah. The Canadian players apologized, and they shouldn’t have had to, either. If we demand sportsmanship so rigorous that basic human emotion isn’t allowed to be displayed, then what the hell are we doing here, anyway? The Olympics is about a lot of things: sport, patriotism, television, regrettable infrastructure spending, insufficient doping penalties, airport efficiency, bus schedules, corruption, fatigue so deep you can barely think, and reporters eating potato chips for lunch.

And at the heart of it all, the human spirit that transports all these people here, to give everything. It’s awesome. Some things require an apology. Being human, without malice or ill intent, isn’t one of them.