Mike Celizic

TURIN, Italy - At last, here’s a story to savor, an athlete to celebrate, a great and historic moment authored by a man wearing USA on his uniform. And best of all, it wasn’t the story anyone expected.

The man is Shani Davis. The moment is the first African-American to win an individual gold medal in the Winter Games. The story is of how Davis, who had been portrayed as the bad guy in an internecine war with his teammate, the much more ballyhooed Chad Hedrick, turned out to be the best of people and the finest of champions.

Davis had let Hedrick do all the talking, absorbing the hits from the media, letting others call him selfish. All the while, Davis concentrated on Saturday night and the race he had been dreaming of winning since he was six years old, when he was the weird kid growing up in the South Side of Chicago — the baddest part of town. He was a black kid who wanted to be a speedskater instead of a basketball star.

“Ever since I was a kid, I used to joke around with my friends,” he said. “I’d say, ‘Some day I’m going to win the 1,000 meters.’”

He is a thoughtful, insightful, soft-spoken man, and he knew how absurd that had to sound so many years ago, when he was just a little kid in a sport with a rich history. And he knows how hard he worked to get into a position to fulfill that dream — just as hard as every other athlete in the Games, including Hedrick.

“I have a lot of respect for Chad,” Davis said of his rival, who crossed over three years ago from in-line skating, a sport he had dominated, and became the best in the world at the 1,500, 5,000 and 10,000-meter races on ice.

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“For someone to come over and do what he’s done is unfathomable,” Davis said, and he sounded as if he meant it.

It was Hedrick who acted the part of the surly and petulant crybaby. He’s the man who came here with publicists selling — quite successfully at first — the story about how their skater was going to try to equal Eric Heiden’s five speedskating gold medals. He’s the man who clearly blamed Davis for the loss of a medal in a made-up event called team pursuit.

And he’s the man who, after the race was done and he hadn’t medaled at all, answered a question about what he thought of Davis’ performance by saying: “I’m happy for Joey,” referring to silver medalist Joey Cheeks, who had previously won the 500-meter event.

Then Hedrick practically bragged about how his sixth-place finish was actually awfully good, considering he’d raced that 1,000-meter event only six times before.

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It was one of those head-scratching moments. How did anyone get sucked into this idea of five gold medals when one was in a race he knew he wasn’t going to win?

Hedrick didn’t explain that, because once he didn’t medal, all the five-medal talk was just that. Even if Davis had run the pursuit, Hedrick couldn’t have won five of any color. End of controversy.

But not for Hedrick, who didn’t seek out Davis, didn’t congratulate him, didn’t talk to him at all. Instead, Hedrick talked about how proud he was to be a member of the team and to skate in the pursuit for his team ... and team this and team that.

It was strange talk from a man who had come here speaking only of individual glory, the idea of team coming up only when it related to his own personal quest for five. And Davis’ sin wasn’t in not skating for the team, but in not skating for Hedrick. None of the other American skaters and none of the international skaters blamed Davis for pursuing his individual goal in an individual sport for an audience that values individual heroics above all others.

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