Photos: Tracey Bartel and Brad Bartel
This morning, the Stanley Cup visited the State Department in honor of the historic State Luncheon with US Secretary of State John Kerry and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Earlier in the week, a reader forwarded us the announcement.
Stanley Cup on Display this Thursday, March 10 at Main State
In honor of the historic State Luncheon with US Secretary of State John Kerry and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ Sports Diplomacy Division, in cooperation with the NHL, will have on display this Thursday in the Main State Exhibition Hall, ice hockey’s most coveted prize, the Stanley Cup.
The Stanley Cup is one of North American sports most recognizable trophies and has long been a symbol of cooperation and competition between the United States and Canada. The Cup is also one of the world’s most photographed sports trophies, having been transported around the world by players from winning Stanley Cup teams, including Afghanistan where it has multiple times served as a morale booster to American and Canadian troops.
The Stanley Cup will be on display for photos from approximately 10:30 to 11:00AM on Thursday, March 10, in the Exhibit Hall of Main State.
30 minutes with The Cup? I figured it’d be a tame event. There’d be a short line to meet it and that’d be it. But according to RMNB readers Tracey Bartel and her son Brad, it was mass hysteria. It’s like everyone was a teenaged girl trying to get a picture with One Direction (the band that would totally play us in the John Scott movie).
“The crowd around the Stanley Cup was consuming,” Tracey wrote to us in an email. “We were lucky to get a couple decent pictures. Mike, the handler with the white gloves, told us, ‘You can touch it, you can kiss it, but if you want to lift it you gotta play and win it.'”
“I’d like to think it just arrived a bit early in Washington DC for us Caps fans,” Tracey added.
Meanwhile, Chicago-native President Obama made a speech introducing Trudeau and I appreciated this line.
Pres. Obama jokes to Canadian PM Trudeau: "Where's the Stanley Cup right now? I'm sorry, is it in my hometown?" https://t.co/y616fS2DyK
— ABC News (@ABC) March 10, 2016
If you were at the event this morning, let us know what it was like meeting Stanley in the comments below. Also, feel free to upload your own photos.