Barack Obama delivering on Olympic beer bet to Stephen Harper
“Message from U.S. President Barack Obama to Prime Minister Stephen Harper — the beer is on its way.
Playing the role of good sport, the White House said Obama is getting ready to ship a case of Molson Canadian beer to Harper to settle a patriotic bet the two leaders made on Sunday’s Olympic gold medal men’s hockey game.
“We are working on the delivery,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, told reporters at Monday’s press briefing.
Obama and Harper made the friendly wager prior to Canada’s 3-2 overtime win over the U.S. Had Canada lost, Harper was to have bought Obama a case of 24 American beer.
While Obama can drown his sorrows over the U.S. loss in private, Gibbs will have to pay up for his bet in a very public way. Likely before week’s end, the most powerful press podium in the world will be coloured in Canadian Maple Leaf red when Gibbs dons a Canadian Olympic hockey jersey.
Like Obama, Gibbs lost a hockey bet he made with Dimitri Soudas, Harper’s spokesman, on the gold medal game’s results.
Gibbs had already lost an initial bet with Soudas last week on the outcome of the Canada-U.S. women’s hockey final, in which he pledged to wear a Canadian jersey to an off-camera gaggle with reporters. That didn’t work out too well. Undeterred, Gibbs went double or nothing with Soudas on Sunday’s men’s final — and lost again.
Now he’s got to wear a Canadian jersey during his daily on-camera briefing. The only question is when. “I’ll be getting him the jersey over the next couple of days,” Soudas said Monday afternoon.” (via Vancouver Sun)
That two-four of American beer was supposedly going to be Yuengling (according to flannelballer)—the beer brought to us by America’s oldest brewery, and the beer of choice on Old Hickory Lane in Leesburg, VA. Frankly, Harper should’a kept it. It’s an eff of a lot better than anything that Molson ever brewed up.
