Turning To the Cheek

Regarding Olympic speed skaters Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis. . . . What the @**##!!?

Few interathletic rivalries (like Tonya and Nancy, of course) have generated as much bad blood as the feud between these two guys. Janet Evans and Brooke Bennett actually had less animosity between each other in the swimming pool at the Atlanta Games a decade ago. Hey, I remember. Those two women at least remembered they were competing for the same team, for the same country. Hedrick and Davis don't even seem to want to acknowledge they're from the same planet.

The brouhaha between the urban street kid Davis and the Texas good ol' boy Hedrick has not only overshadowed the medals they won earlier at Torino, it may have cost at least one of them a gold medal. They were so determined to show up one another in the men's 1500-meter race, they allowed Italian sakter Enrico Fabris to outskate both of them. Afterward, each accused the other of bad sportsmanship, with Davis calling Hedrick "unprofessional" and adding that it would have been nice if Hedrick had congratulated him for winning the 1000-meter race the way he congratulated Hedrick for winning the 5000-meter event. Davis stormed out of the room, leaving Hedrick to whine about how Davis cost the United States (and, coincidentally, himself) a medal by not skating in the team pursuit. Chad tried to put the beat face on the frosty relationship between the duo, saying that at least it brought attention to the sport of speed skating back home.

Yeah, kind of like the Monty Python sketch where an advertising representative promoted a brand of coffee for its ability to induce cholera and vomiting. "Well, people know the name, sir," he tells his boss.

"They certainly do know the name," his boss replies, "they burned the factory down!" :-D

Their teammate Joey Cheek was left to pick up the pieces, having won as many medals as Hedrick and Davis put together and donating prize money he won for his efforts to a charity helping refugees from the civil war in Sudan. A noble, selfless effort. Too bad it won't promote speed skating in America. Americans prefer sports that are supposed to have an element of contact in them. I mean, if Eric Heiden couldn't popularize it . . .

The United States has actually done quite well at these Games, its medal count of eighteen second only to Germany's 21 (as of yesterday). And yet Hedrick and Davis are allowing their nasty spat to overshadow this success. (They haven't done it alone. Remember Lindsey Jacobellis's showboating during the snowboarding cross event, which cost her a gold medal? If there was ever a time that the maxim that you don't win silver, you lose gold rang true, this was it.) Even more troubling is the parallel between the Hedrick-Davis disunion and the lack of unity at home, with Davis representing the multicultural blue states and Hedrick representing the Fox News-happy red states. And you know how that's working out back home. :-O