Turin – In a dim hallway one floor beneath the oval, Joey Cheek rounded a corner and almost slammed into a wall of ravenous sportswriters brimming with questions.
Cheek, a gold and silver medalist, is a breath of fresh air. He has raised more than $250,000 for young war refugees in Africa. And he had just skated his Olympic farewell minutes before. But he knew the score.
“Wow!” he said with a smirk. “And let me guess, it’s all about me. Not a single word about Shani or Chad.”
First question: “Joey, would you liked to have seen Shani and Chad skate in the same heat tonight?”
As Olympic spats go, the Shani Davis-Chad Hedrick hostilities are dwarfing the Athens venom of Carmelo and Larry. They’re rekindling nasty memories of Nancy and Tonya. This modern ice feud is edgy. It’s sometimes silly. And, it might be the best thing to happen to long track in years, said Eric Heiden, one of the sport’s legends.
“If you’re a public relations person, any press is good press,” said Heiden, during an interview at Oval Lingotto. “It certainly brings more to the story than just skating laps and who’s winning a gold medal.”
Heiden’s personal tale sparkles with gold. The Wisconsin native won five gold medals at the 1980 Winter Games. But after the Lake Placid flame was doused, long track drifted out of the minds of U.S. sports fans. World Cup circuits are held every year. Americans pay attention to long trackers every four years.
“Maybe some people will follow the sport just to see where this competition between Shani and Chad goes the next couple of years,” Heiden said. “Plans are that both of them are going to continue skating. We’ve got the world championships coming up and, yeah, it will be interesting to see what happens.”
Their next clash will take place away from Olympic ice. Hedrick skates the 10,000-meter final today (he holds the world record). Davis has decided to skip the event, ending their Turin trash-talking. The back- and-forth sniping that escalated when Davis elected to skip the team pursuit event has left Heiden smiling.
“There are the personalities, you know, Chad versus Shani. One (Hedrick) is a very strong competitor, a lot of drive, measures his success on gold medals. The other guy (Davis) is more into the zen of the sport. He enjoys skating for the pleasure of skating.”
And that battle, skating experts say, may launch the next Davis or the next Hedrick – a world in-line champion who decided to jump to speedskating just four years ago. At the Pettit National Ice Center in Milwaukee, one of the few American long track venues, calls and e-mails have been pouring in since the start of the Games from people across the country who want to join the sport, said Rob Multzerer, the oval’s director of marketing. They’re asking about the skating school and about lessons.
Many callers are in-line skaters or the parents of in-line skaters. They are from Texas, Florida, Ohio and other states, Multzerer said.
“They’re asking, ‘How the heck can I do what Chad did? What are the steps?”‘ Multzerer said. “Hey, I could be talking to the father of the next Chad Hedrick. It’s pretty cool.”
