USA TODAY International Edition
DAVIS READY TO MEDAL IN ‘ FUN’
Sochi will be third Games for pioneer speedskater
Shani Davis has repeatedly made history in U. S. speedskating, and not only because he’s the first African American to medal in an individual sport in the Winter Olympics.
This season, Davis, 31, is preparing for his third Olympics, which probably will be his last. ( He qualified for the 2002 Olympic short- track team but did not compete at the Games.) He feels no pressure, saying this week, “I’ve done almost everything I wanted to do in my speedskating career in terms of results. I’m just going to enjoy these Olympics and have fun and try to collect some medals.”
He holds world records in the sport’s middle- distance races of 1,000 and 1,500 meters, winning gold in the 1,000 in the last two Winter Games. He also took silver medals in the 1,500 in Torino and Vancouver.
“My No. 1 goal this season would be to compete at the highest level my body and my mind allows me to and at the same time stay healthy and injury free and just get better as we lead up to the Winter Games in Sochi,” says Davis, a Chicago native.
In the season’s first World Cup event last week in Calgary, he won gold in the 1,000 and silver in the 1,500. The World Cup at the Utah Olympic Oval begins Friday.
After the Utah competition, there are two World Cups left ( Astana, Kazakhstan, on Nov. 29- Dec. 1 and Berlin the following weekend) before the Sochi Olympics. The Olympic trials are back in Utah on Dec. 27- Jan 1.
Davis spends his summers in Utah, training with the short- track team, because he likes the atmosphere of intervals and hard physical training. He grew up skating both long and short track.
Olympic gold medalist Derek Par- ra, the sport production and race operations coordinator for the Utah World Cup, calls Davis’ situation unique. “He’s been the mainstay and cornerstone of our sprinting program for going on almost four Olympic Games now,” says Parra, who also coaches. “He’s not part of the national team. He trains on his own or with our short- track team.”
This summer, Davis says, he worked on areas he has been weaker in while building on his strengths.
“My strength would be my accel- eration, strength and my corners ( turns),” he says. “My weakness is sometimes getting off the starting line fast. I’m more built for middle distances, so I’m not going to be the snappiest, quickest guy, like a Korean or Japanese or maybe even a Dutch, but I have strengths where they’re weak.”
As for Sochi, Davis thinks the U. S. team is strong and improving. In Vancouver, the U. S. men won four medals. Davis was not part of the team pursuit that won silver because he didn’t submit his name for the candidate pool. In 2006, Chad Hedrick criticized Davis for not entering the U. S. pool for the event. Davis had told officials he preferred not to skate the pursuit so he could focus on his individual races.
He’s looking forward to skating again on the Sochi ice, where he won silver in the 1,500 and bronze in the 1,000 in a test event last season.
His favorite part of the Games? “I love being in an atmosphere like the village, seeing all the competing countries together united, eating good food, switching pins, switching hats, trading uniforms, things like that. It’s the one time in the world when everyone puts all their differences aside and just unites. It’s a cool experience to be part of.”
Davis, who joined the Evanston ( Ill.) Speedskating Club at age 6, says he’s unsure whether he’ll retire after Sochi. “I would like to take some time off to rest, because I’ve been speedskating for 25 straight years,” he says. “It would be nice to have a season off, let the body rest, let the mind rest, let everything kind of return to normal and then see if my heart is still into speedskating.”