Haley Irwin, left, and Tessa Bonhomme, celebrate after Canada beat the U.S. 2-0 for the women’s gold in ice hockey at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.

New York ? They worked hard, they triumphed, and then they played hard — the way athletes so often do.

And yet the photos of the Canadian women hockey players joyously feting their gold medal with beer, champagne and cigars struck some as jarring, or at least inappropriate. And the International Olympic Committee said it was looking into the incident, which took place on the Olympic ice after fans had left.

On Twitter, Facebook and other venues across the Web, many were debating whether the scrutiny was fair. Most seemed to think it wasn’t, and a number thought it smacked of sexism, conscious or not.

“I’m gobsmacked at the reaction,” said Kara DeFrias, a writer from San Diego who expressed her thoughts on Twitter, calling officials hypocrites for even looking into the matter.

“If this were the men’s team, would anybody be saying one word about it?” asked DeFrias, in a followup telephone interview. “Of course not. It would be no big deal, because boys will be boys. I absolutely think they singled these players out because they’re women.”

More disturbingly for some, Marie-Philip Poulin, who scored both goals in Canada’s 2-0 victory over the United States, had a beer in her hand. Poulin doesn’t turn 19 — legal drinking age in British Columbia — until next month. The drinking age in Alberta, where the Canadian team trains, is 18.