Bad blood boils between U.S. skaters

TURIN, Italy -- Maybe these Games are on backwards. A competition that includes ski jumping and skeleton has its most dangerous moments at ice dancing. And locker room dissing is taking place a mile from the hockey arena, at traditionally cozy, brotherly speedskating.

What happened Tuesday night at the Oval Lingotto is about five steps beyond the Jamaican bobsled team on the absurdity meter. We need Tonya and Nancy just to recapture our sanity.

Before we discuss Tuesday night's post-race press conference, before everyone in Turin -- including the protagonists -- rewrites history to indicate that Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis never had an opinion of one another, let's go back to a phone conversation Hedrick had with Sports Illustrated back in November.

"I like Shani," Hedrick told the magazine. "Shani's cool. We both come from different backgrounds, not traditional speedskating backgrounds. That'll give 'em something to talk about."

So hold that thought. File it away as a starting point, as incongruous as it is, for the bizarre chapter of the speedskating folklore we witnessed on Tuesday.

Some background: In a wildly successful Olympics for the men's long-track speedskating, Hedrick won the 5,000 meters on Feb. 11 and Davis won the 1,000 last Saturday. Everyone is talking about what happened in between, when Davis chose to skip the team pursuit, claiming he needed the preparation time for the 1,000. Hedrick, preparing for the same race, decided to skate in the pursuit because, as he said, he was a team player.

Then everyone jumped in and started mentioning who said what about whom, and, well, you had the speedskating version of the Hatfields and the McCoys.

On Tuesday, Davis and Hedrick skated, in separate pairs in the 1,500 meters. Davis finished second, Hedrick third. Before he fades into blurry agate in U.S. papers, Enrico Fabris won a very dramatic race for the home country. He will be the lead picture in all the local papers tomorrow, but that is a matter of perception. The most memorable stuff happened after the race.

Davis and Hedrick both hugged Fabris and congratulated him on his victory, but certainly not together. They never quite acknowledged one another, even as they took part in a flower ceremony at the arena -- medals are handed out later in downtown Turin -- and they were lucky to pose with Fabris in between them.

Fabris passed through the mixed zone and gleefully headed upstairs long before Davis and Hedrick headed through the downstairs hallway. The U.S. skaters both expressed muted joy and some disappointment over getting a medal but not winning the race. But they disagreed on the rivalry or lack thereof.

"I'm really glad we weren't in the same pair today," said Hedrick. "We would have been trying to kill each other ... I don't enjoy this feud with Shani."

Davis had a different view.

"I'm not motivated by trying to beat Chad," he said. "We're competitors fighting for the same thing. I would have skated the same race if I had skated with anybody. We don't have a feud."

That was an appetizer.

Once the skaters arrived in a crowded pressroom upstairs, they sat far apart on opposite sides of a table. They handled questions with courtesy for the better part of 20 minutes, but things deteriorated rapidly, as if the dam of discretion burst. At a time when a sport with attitude, such as snowboarding, has taken over the front pages, was the rivalry between them good for the staid world of speedskating?

The exchange went like this:

"It's not like we're gonna fight each other, roll around in the snow," Davis said. He then pointed out that a European press that was more knowledgeable about the sport would be concentrating more about the intricacies of the racing. "They don't highlight everyone's belch and fart," he added.

Hedrick disagreed. "We have a difference of opinion," he said. "I think it's great. It's Shani and me. The folks at home want to see the battle."

Davis disagreed with the disagreement. "This is not a heavyweight boxing fight," he said. "I totally disagree. Skating is about doing your best. There's more than just Chad and Shani competing ... I think it's better if people respect the sport of speedskating and not try to turn it into boxing, football and NASCAR."

Then someone asked the skaters how long they thought they would stay with their sport. "I think I'll skate as long as my heart desires," Davis said. Hedrick sounded weary. He talked about the years in the sport and his outside interests, including acting in Hollywood someday.

That set off Davis, who proclaimed himself "not a phony," not the type, he said, "who would act in Hollywood." The room hushed. As if to catch himself, Davis added, "Not talking about Chad, but ..."

A minute later, Davis added: "It would have been nice if after the 1,000 Chad would have hugged me and shook my hand and congratulated me after I had hugged him and congratulated him after he won the 5,000."

At that, Davis walked out, but mumbled loud enough for those within earshot to hear: "I'm done. I've got nothing else to say. He shakes my hand when I lose. That's typical Chad."

Left to fend for himself at the table, Hedrick repeated his displeasure about the way Davis handled the team pursuit event. "I felt betrayed in a way," he said. "Not only did he not participate but he didn't even discuss it with me. I felt we blew a real chance for a gold medal."

Out in the hallway, reporters circled Cherie Davis, Shani's outspoken mother who has become a lightning rod of sorts for anything to do with Shani. She wrote nasty e-mails to skaters, federation officials and reporters in his defense, even at times when perhaps there was nothing that needed defending.

She arrived incognito, wearing Dutch attire: a cap and jacket that said Holland on it. Reporters were blocked from speaking to her by larger men wearing Dutch curling shirts, one of whom had gained access to the press conference and had started razzing Hedrick before the moderator told him to leave.

Cherie invited one reporter, Bryan Burwell, a veteran journalist who writes for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, to speak with her solo. Afterwards, Burwell shared one of her comments that she made in response to a question about the conflict between her and the U.S. Speedskating federation. Said Cherie Davis via Burwell: "I'm supposed to be crazy? It's my son. What's their motivation? If it wasn't for me, my son would be in the streets selling drugs."

Nearby, Bob Fenn, Davis' primary coach, struck up a conversation with a reporter while a woman who was with Fenn started mouthing the words "no reporters."

"You crazy?" she told Fenn later. "Don't give that story to the press."

How does one begin to digest this circus, at speedskating of all places? Remember Bonnie Blair talking about the docile crowds at skating 14 years ago? "Everybody knows everybody," she'd tell us. "We're all family. We're normal. Maybe that's why some people think we're boring."

Well, the tragicomedy has broken through normality's clouds. Really, NBC need not worry about reality shows on rival networks. They just need to follow the speedskaters.

Maybe time makes people forget. Maybe the pressure of training in monotony for so many years to do something so dynamic in so few minutes brings people to snap judgments and forces them to snap at one another. Maybe it's us, the Internet-blogging, pot-stirrers who will gladly relay that Shani said this and Chad said that until we can blog anew.

Sadly, yes, this will help the sport regain some of the attention it has lost. War is on page one of your local paper. Détente is on page 47.

This nonsense aside, there really is something to like about Davis, especially when the street-smart kid gets to be a kid. People around his old rink in the Chicago area rave about how other kids flock to him when he mentors them, and plays with them at the rink, which is often.

Almost anyone who knows Hedrick says it's impossible to dislike him and his Texas charm. Hedrick insists now that "Shani and I never really talked. People were speculating we were great friends. We're competitors."

But someone should remind him about his comments to SI in November. Someone should put these two in a room and let them talk this out; not for us -- we feed off catfights like sharks on deadline -- but for themselves. If they would step back, they might see the quirks and guts that brought two neon lights into the colorless world of speedskating and they might be OK with each other.

But -- you crazy? -- don't give that story to the press.