KEARNS, Utah -- Shani Davis became the first black to
qualify for the U.S. Olympic speedskating team in a race tinged
with controversy after he beat close friend and World Cup champion
Apolo Anton Ohno on Saturday.
|  | | Shani Davis needed to win the race to make the U.S. Olympic team -- and he did just that. |
Davis, a former roller skater from Chicago, went right to the
lead of the 1,000-meter short-track final and stayed there, holding
off Ohno and two other skaters in the last race of the Olympic
trials.
"I needed to win big, all or nothing," said Davis, who at
6-foot-2 is the tallest American skater in a sport where gravity
favors those who are built low to the ice.
The 19-year-old Davis jumped from eighth to sixth in the
standings to grab the last berth for the Salt Lake Games. He had to
win the race or wait another four years.
"I'm overwhelmed with joy right now," said Davis, who started
skating on ice at 5, around the same time his parents divorced.
Ohno won the first seven races of the trials and had already
secured his spot on the Olympic team before the last event.
Ohno stayed back in third and never made a serious push for the
lead, shying away from the daring passes he used in his victories.
After Davis crossed the finish line, Ohno skated up from behind
and grabbed his friend in a congratulatory embrace. Davis pumped
his arms in triumph and high-fived spectators along the boards as
he glided through a cooldown lap.
National short-track coach Susan Ellis questioned whether Ohno
tried to win and asked him about his tactics afterward.
"He says he was playing it safe. That's what he says," she
said. "The talk and suspicion is kind of troubling. But Shani
skated a great race, that's the bottom line."
Ohno denied that he was more concerned about Davis getting on
the team than winning.
"I played it safe," the 19-year-old skater from Seattle said.
"He ran his own race."
Davis agreed that nothing shady went on between the friends.
"That's real low. I don't know anything about that," he said.
Rusty Smith of Sunset Beach, Calif., was second, Ohno third and
Ron Biondo of Broadview Heights, Ohio, fourth.
Smith, who needed to finish ahead of Biondo to race in the 1,000
at the Olympics, scoffed at the idea that the outcome was
orchestrated.
"There's way too much involved. There's no way to set up a
race, especially when me and Ron are competing for an individual
spot," Smith said.
"Apolo has won every race, and the last thing he needs to do is
go down. I went to pass Shani a couple of times and I couldn't get
by," Smith added.
Davis needed the 987 points that went with first place in order
to move into sixth, knocking 1998 Olympian Tommy O'Hare of Colorado
Springs, Colo., off the team.
O'Hare stormed out of the Olympic Oval without talking to
reporters.
"Tommy has been a part of the team for a long time. He brought
a lot of experience to the team. It's tough," Ellis said. "He was
pretty angry. He was too upset to talk about it."
Biondo said he understood O'Hare's frustration.
"It affected a lot of people the way it went," he said. "I
don't know if there was a plan or not. It's hard for me to say.
They're my teammates."
Until his victory, Davis' best finish in the previous seven
races was fifth in the nine-lap time trial. He hadn't reached an
`A' final until Saturday.
"It's my first Olympic trials and I was a little scared a
couple of times," he said. "I wasn't feeling good on the blades
or the ice. I wasn't used to the hard ice. I just didn't feel like
me."
To get out of his funk, Davis spent Friday night playing video
games and dining with friends. He woke up Saturday refreshed and in
a better frame of mind, even joking to his mother, Cherie, that he
would win the 1,000 and make the Olympic team.
"Inside there was a little piece that said you can do it. When
you're skating against Apolo, things are just little inside of
you," he said.
"When I saw two laps to go, that little feeling was about this
big. It was huge," he said, spreading his hands apart.
Davis was raised by his mother in Chicago's Hyde Park
neighborhood. She spent hours driving him to clubs in Evanston,
where the other skaters were black, and later Northbrook.
"I thought speedskating was a black sport," Davis said,
smiling. "I go to Northbrook and I see all these white kids and I
was just like, `Wow, there is a world outside of Evanston.' "
Davis shared his victory with his mother, a secretary who used
to wake her son up every morning to run a mile when he was eight.
"My mom always pushed me," he said. "She really wanted it for
me and I'm happy I could repay her."
Joining Ohno, Smith, Biondo and Davis on the men's short-track
Olympic team are J.P. Kepka of St. Louis and Daniel Weinstein of
Chestnut Hill, Mass.
On the women's team are Allison Baver of Sinking Spring, Pa.,
Julie Goskowicz of Colorado Springs, Colo., Mary Griglak of Berea,
Ohio, Caroline Hallisey of Natick, Mass., Amy Peterson of
Maplewood, Minn., and Erin Porter of Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
Peterson, 30, is a three-time Olympic medalist competing in her
fourth Winter Games.
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