African American Shani Davis currently holds the World Records for Speed Skating’s 1000m and 1500m distances. Davis was the first Black athlete to win an individual event Gold Medal at the Winter Olympics. Davis accomplished that feat in the 2006 Olympics, in Turin, Italy, and he actually claimed both the 1500m silver Medals. In his career thus far, Davis has set eight World Records. All of these accomplishments and many, many, more, make Davis an integral figure in African American History.Though the Olympics is the most attractive media and popular culture event when it comes to most sports, Davis considers his World Allround Championship Gold Medals (’05 and ’06) to be more valuable than his Olympic Gold Medal. In the World Allround Championship skaters must perform in all four primary skating distances (500m, 1000m, 1500m, and 10,000m). To add to the difficulty of the Allround event, all of these races must be done in a two-day span of time.
Some may scoff at Davis’ suggestion about the Allround versus the prestigious Olympic Gold, but Davis has constantly been one to stir controversy by doing things his own way. There seems to be consistent criticism of Davis due to his history of not entering events that many others may want him to, and then on the other end of the spectrum there have been suggestions of teammates having colluded to ensure that Davis would qualify for other events. The attacks and analysis seem to continue no matter what Davis does. Perhaps Davis is a prickly competitor that follows his own rules according to the success he seeks, and not the success that others seek; and perhaps Davis’ unique qualities amongst speed skaters draws the type of attention that being “unique” tends to do. Fortunately it seems that Davis is not one to care what others have to say about him and his journey.
Davis’ strong spirit of independence seems to hail from his mother, who made all those big and little decisions in her son’s early speed skating development that would bring him to the success he experiences today. Early morning training, and moving to residences that were more compatible to her son’s training schedule were amongst the special approaches Davis’ mother used to better her son’s preparation. All of this developed out of a simple suggestion from Davis’ mother’s boss that Shani give the sport a try. Surely the fact that roller rink attendants had to tell Davis’ to slow down for the his safety and that of and others, must have led to the notion of a transition to speed skating. And so Davis took his show from the roller rink to the ice rink, and as they say, “The rest is history.” For Davis, that history began only two months after beginning the sport as he immediately claimed regional titles.
The name Shani translates from Swahili to English to mean something like “light” and “weight.” As a successful pioneer in speed skating, for African Americans, Davis performs a heavyweight duty in leadership. Tiger Woods is the “latest and greatest” model of societal transformation through sports. The World of golf will never be the same (in a great way) since the talented touch of Tiger Woods, and perhaps the same can be inspired by the success of Shani Davis. It should be exceptionally inspiring to young African American athletes, that even in this advanced day and age, it is still possible to be the first in history to accomplish something significant for this (our) great culture and people.
