ByBen CollinsBBC Sport journalist<\/p>\n
A "distasteful joke" by US President Donald Trump has overshadowed the achievement of female athletes at the Winter Olympics, says USA women's ice hockey captain Hilary Knight.<\/p>\n
USA won both men's and women's ice hockey gold for the first time at the Milan-Cortina Games this month.<\/p>\n
The men's team received a congratulatory call from Trump, who invited them to his State of the Union address<\/a> and said he would have to ask their female counterparts as well or he "probably would be impeached".<\/p>\n The women's team later declined an invitation from Trump to attend Tuesday's speech in Washington DC.<\/p>\n "It was sort of a distasteful joke, and unfortunately that is overshadowing a lot of the success, the success of just women at the Olympics carrying for Team USA and having amazing gold medal feats," five-time Olympic medallist Knight told ESPN.<\/p>\n The men's team was criticised after several players appeared to laugh when Trump made his comment, but Knight said: "I think there's a genuine level of support there and respect. That's being overshadowed by a quick lapse.<\/p>\n "The guys were in a tough spot, so I think it's a shame this storyline and narrative has kind of blown up and [is] overshadowing that connection and genuine interest in one another and cheering each other on."<\/p>\n Knight, 36, ended her Olympic career with 15 goals, the most by any US male or female player.<\/p>\n She said she hopes the Trump controversy proves to be a "really good learning point, to really focus on how we talk about women, not only in sport but in industry".<\/p>\n She said: "Women aren't less than, and their achievements shouldn't be overshadowed by anything else other than how great they are."<\/p>\n Trump joke 'overshadows' US women's Olympic successImage source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Hilary Knight has won two gold medals and three silvers at the Winter OlympicsByBen CollinsBB…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8601,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-decor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Related topics<\/h2>\n
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