updated 8:14 a.m. ET Feb. 26, 2006

TURIN, Italy - Mouth agape, tongue hanging out, head tilting over — Chad Hedrick looked like he was done.

Ever so deftly, Dutch skater Carl Verheijen pulled up right behind him. Suddenly, Hedrick shifted into another gear with a burst of short, choppy strides — and took off.

Already out of the gold and fading, the brash-talking Texan played for second in his final Olympic race at these games.

Hedrick finished off a complete set of speedskating medals Friday, settling for silver behind Bob de Jong of the Netherlands in the grueling 10,000 meters after a bit of cat-and-mouse with Verheijen, who finished third.

Hedrick, who already had a gold and a bronze, became the fourth U.S. Winter Olympian to claim as many as three medals at one games (short tracker Apolo Ohno later matched Hedrick).

“My heart is bigger than anybody else out there,” Hedrick said. “If another skater had felt like I did today, he wouldn’t have been on the podium. That’s just me refusing to lose.”

Actually, he did lose, finishing nearly four seconds behind de Jong. But in true Hedrick fashion, he talked up his head-to-head battle with Verheijen in the final pairing as though that was the race for gold.

Hedrick was watching the Dutchman on the video screens at each end of the rink. On the changeover with 3½ laps to go, Verheijen slid into Hedrick’s draft, having whittled down a deficit of more than 4 seconds.

“I could feel Carl catching me,” Hedrick said. “I decided with six laps to go that the best way was to rest a little bit, let him catch me, let him think he has me. Then I sprinted away from him on that one lap.”

Slide show   Emotional Moments Feb. 26: See photos of athletes' highs and lows from Sunday.

Verheijen scoffed at Hedrick’s strategy.

“I’m glad Chad was thinking about me rather than himself,” he said. “Instead of considering how to win the silver medal, he should have considered how to win the gold medal.”

Typical Hedrick. The guy who feuded with teammate Shani Davis stirred things up right to the end. The speedskating competition ends Saturday with the women’s 5,000.

“He has an attitude we’re not used to,” Verheijen said.

Slide show   Pictures of the Day Check out Sunday's best Olympic images.

Hedrick wanted to make a run at Eric Heiden’s record five gold medals. Instead, he’ll have to be content with joining Heiden and Sheila Young and Ohno as the only Americans to win as many as three medals of any color at a Winter Games.

De Jong’s winning time of 13 minutes, 1.57 seconds was nearly four seconds better than his personal best. Hedrick finished in 13:05.40 — a full 10 seconds off the world mark he set in December at Salt Lake City. Verheijen took the bronze in 13:08.80.

Hedrick admitted that his decision to compete in five events over a 13-day period took a toll. His legs felt heavy. His skates didn’t seem to cut through the ice as they did in his dominating 5,000 victory.

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