Davis Is Keeping Speedskating on Edge

American Shani Davis accelerated en route to finishing second in the 500 meters on Saturday at the world all-around championships in Moscow. Davis and his coach, Bob Fenn, celebrated on Sunday after Davis became the overall winner in the competition.

The biggest reason for his recent success, he said, might be the unmitigated embarrassment of the whole experience at the Salt Lake Olympics, when his place on the team was threatened because of allegations of race-fixing. There also was the frustration of the two years preceding those Games, when, he said, he felt like a training pawn for short-track stars Apolo Anton Ohno and Rusty Smith at the U.S. Olympic Committee's residency program in Colorado Springs.

"I don't even consider myself a 2002 Olympian, sometimes," Davis said. "After 2002, I just wanted to make myself unstoppable. I didn't want to be in the mercy of anyone who could control my fate."

Officials from within the U.S. Olympic Committee and U.S. Speedskating don't seen to know quite how to handle their sensitive superstar, whose charges and depictions of situations they dispute, but who also happens to be polite and well-spoken, a potentially attractive centerpiece to advertising campaigns leading to the 2006 Games. The sport -- the conflicts with Davis aside -- has never done better. U.S. speedskaters won a record 11 medals in Salt Lake City, and all eight medal winners intend to try again in Turin. And, of course, there is Davis, who could blossom into the sport's biggest U.S. star since Eric Heiden, who won a record five gold medals at the 1980 Winter Games.

"Ninety-eight percent of the stuff going on in our sport is great," said Gabel, a four-time Olympian in short-track skating. "There's too much good going on in [American] speedskating to focus on the negative."

Davis, though, contends that his career has been draped with negativity, so he has no problem bringing a little to the organization he holds responsible. The breaking point came two weeks ago, when he was informed his U.S. Speedskating contract had been voided -- which cut his funding of several thousand dollars per year and left him footing the bill for most travel expenses -- because he had breached a sponsorship agreement. Instead of wearing a Qwest logo on his pants leg, Davis wore the logo of his own sponsor, the Dutch bank DSB Bank, at two competitions. Two other athletes, Derek Parra and Chad Hedrick, received the same letter for the same violation.

Davis, who wore the Qwest logo on another part of his uniform, said the organization has been unyielding and unprofessional over the issue. U.S. Speedskating officials said the rules violation was clear; therefore, in fairness to their sponsors and other U.S. athletes, they were forced to act. Though Davis, Parra and Hedrick have lost significant financial benefits, their eligibility to compete is not affected.

"I'm no longer interested in working out anything with U.S. Speedskating," Davis said. "I consider them the enemy now."

This, Davis said, has been the culmination of years of aggravation. In 2002, his spot -- the sixth and final one -- on the Olympic team was challenged by another skater, Tommy O'Hare, who charged two of Davis's friends, Ohno and Smith, with conspiring to fix an Olympic trials race to ensure that Davis made the team. The pair was exonerated, but Davis said he never felt vindicated, only humiliated.

Fred Benjamin, the president of U.S. Speedskating at the time, pointed out that no one ever formally accused Davis of being involved in the cheating.

"He feels there are many occasions he's been hurt [by U.S. Speedskating] but I can't truly point to one and say, absolutely, he's been hurt," said Benjamin, an attorney who once employed Shani's mother, Cherie, as a legal secretary. "That doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

Because he has no agent, most of Davis's affairs are handled by his mother. Much like her son, she has few kind words for U.S. Speedskating, an organization she claims only slowed and stunted his progress in the sport for years.

"It goes back to everything," she said. "Everything to undermine him since he was a child. It was always a constant battle to get him into programs. They were always saying he wasn't good enough. I'm just tired of it."

Several Olympic officials and skaters said Cherie Davis had sent e-mails or letters expressing dissatisfaction with a variety of matters to U.S. Olympic Committee and U.S. Speedskating officials, former skaters, current skaters and the parents of skaters, but that many who received such correspondence found it difficult to reach resolutions with her.

"USOC and U.S. Speedskating officials have done everything in our power to try to resolve any differences with Shani Davis and his mother," Gabel said. "They clearly have no interest in being part of our organization or what we are trying to accomplish -- and they have that right. Any attempt I have made to have a friendly correspondence with them has been refused."

One skater, who requested anonymity, said Cherie Davis had sent letters to several skaters urging them to stay away from her son.

"I don't think anybody has a problem with Shani," the skater said. "I think everybody is a little cautious about what they say to him with the way he interprets things."

Shani Davis sees envy, plain and simple. He is, after all, doing things that, on the surface, seem impossible. Though U.S. Speedskating officials would prefer Davis concentrate on long track, he said he likes short track too much to give it up. "I think there's a lot of jealousy out there in long-track," Shani Davis said. "I don't know why. These guys are very successful, Olympic medalists. I think it comes down to greed. People want too much. . . . I feel on the long-track side, not a lot of people are very happy for me. They know who they are."

Right? Wrong? It doesn't matter to Davis. His perceptions are his reality, and his reality is his fuel, and his fuel has sent him skyrocketing through his sport.

"Those guys who dragged my name through the mud, made me feel like I didn't belong and didn't believe in me, they're the reason I am where I am now," he said. "That was the icing on the cake for me."