Shanni Davis' immediate comment was "I don't care what anybody thinks."
Typical arrogant, pampered, and self-centered athlete.
Outside of a brief Costas mention. The press has has buried this story on a national and international level. The only story I could find was in Davis' local paper.
Do athletes really go to the Olympics for their country, or for themselves?
Send him home on the same flight as the commie figure skating nut job. They can complain together for 8 hours.
May be there's room for him on the Womans Curling team.
How can this guy dis the US team and his country in such an arrogant and bold manner and not be sent home.
This is disgusting and a poor example of sportsmanship and the Olympic spirit. A terrible example for young athletes and kids to watch.
His biggest loss will be the most long lasting. He can forget about endorsement money.
Unlike Hedrick, I suppose, whose motivation (according to this article) is to win as many golds as he, he, he can.
Calling Bryant Gumballll
"Typical arrogant, pampered, and self-centered athlete."
Indeed. Yet, if it's the Olympics we get nasty about it. If it's on the football field or basketball court, we make these arrogant, pampered, and self-centered athletes into national "heroes."
It might be wrong of me to say this, but there's a part of me that is thrilled to see Hedrick fail to win five gold medals. Hedrick never would have "equaled" Heiden's accomplishment even if had won five golds. Heiden won five gold medals in individual races, and I've always had a problem with skaters like Kedrick and swimmers like Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz who pad their medal totals by participating in relay events.
Heiden won gold medals in five races that ranged from 500 to 10,000 meters -- something that will probably never be accomplished again. This is sort of the equivalent of having the same runner win gold medals at five different distances from 100 meters to the marathon . . . something that would rightly be regarded as the greatest feat in sports history.
Anybody know anything about the feud between Shani and his mother and the U.S. Speedskating association that the article references?
(Outside of a brief Costas mention. The press has has buried this story on a national and international level. The only story I could find was in Davis' local paper.)
Sounds like Rush is right about black athletes. The biggest bigotry is the bigotry of low expectations. A white athlete would have been taken to task by the media.
Hooray for Shanni Davis! It is HIS choice to make. I'm sick of this Olympic pseudo-religion.
I have always been an admirer of Freerepublic for having balanced viewpoints on both sides so here is my two cents.
When I first heard this story I got the impression that Shani Davis had let his teammates down. However further research shows the following:
1. Shani Davis was not originally selected for the pursuit team.
The articles make it sound as though he backed out and left his teammates high and dry. In fact, he never skated with the pursuit team, never practiced with them and was not an original member of the team. (Thanks to Wikipedia for good info). He was asked to participated, but how soon before the olympics is a matter of dispute.
2. Eric Heiden (Dr. Heiden) Defends Him
I have tremendous respect for Eric Heiden who is considered probably the greatest speed skater in history. Many press articles state that Heiden had "...a few choice words" for Shani Davis. But in Eric Heiden's actual articles he sings a much different tune by saying,
"Davis did the right thing by not skating in the pursuit. His goal was to skate the 1,000 and the 1,500. He was put in a unique position with team pursuit. It's a new race for the Olympics and the format was something that none of the teams were quite sure how to deal with."
see http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/olympics/torino2006/speed_skating/news?slug=eh-heiden021906&prov=yhoo&type=lgns
Further in this article he notes that
"Another thing that people may be overlooking is that, in Salt Lake City, Davis was a member of the short-track team for a relay race, but didn't get to skate. So he's been in that situation before, where he didn't get to participate and he didn't want to do that to somebody here. It's tough to fault him for what he did. He may look selfish, but he was in that same position four years ago and didn't want anyone else to be in that position here."
In other words, Shani Davis felt bad about knocking someone out of an Olympic spot in Salt Lake and then not racing. He stated that the would never take a spot from someone again which hardly makes him sound self-centered. see also
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/02/19/SPG3NHBH2G1.DTL&type=printable
The actual quote from Shani in the above article is, ""I'll say this 100 times,'' he said. "... After 2002, when I went to the Olympics but didn't get to skate, I told myself that I would never, ever take someone else's opportunity to skate at an Olympic Games.''
I am sure that this controversy will continue to rage, but given the information I found beyond the basic headlines, I have to wonder if the some of this controversy is not due to the press playing on the competitive nature of two very good athletes, Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis.