In the end, though, it also took away from what Hedrick really does well, which is skate. He grew up skating in his father’s roller rink and didn’t graduate to the ice until three years ago, and now he’s got something he could have never gotten on wheels — a trio of Olympic medals.

The last one came in a race that was more marathon than speedskate. Two at a time, skaters made 25 laps around the speedskating oval, relentlessly trudging away until they finished the 6.2-mile race.

Hedrick was in the last group and he owned the world record, a combination that seemed perfect for gold. But he was so worn out after four events that he had spent the last two days inside his room at the Olympic Village, resting and eating to prepare himself for the final race.

Four laps into the race he was 2 seconds ahead of leader Bob de Jong’s time and seemingly on his way. But he hit the wall, the lap times began getting slower and the mostly Dutch crowd cheered harder as it realized that Hedrick was not going to catch their leader.

It became a race for second, and Hedrick seemed on the verge of losing that to Dutch skating partner Carl Verheijen. But he dug down, found something and managed to hold Verheijen off.

“My heart’s bigger than everybody’s out there,” he said. “If everyone out there felt like I did, they wouldn’t have been on the podium. That was just me refusing to lose.”

Actually Hedrick did lose, if the definition of losing is coming in behind someone else.

That was his definition earlier in the week when he said 48th place was the same as second place to him, but apparently the Olympics have mellowed him somewhat.

Winning three medals can do that to a guy.