Olympic speed skater Shani Davis turned in an impressive victory Saturday in the 1,000 meters, demonstrating that Blacks can win individual competition in the snow-white Winter Olympics. Rather than celebrating the victory of a 23-year-old man who grew up on the South Side of Chicago, however, Davis’ victory has been clouded by those who questioned his decision to concentrate on his individual race instead of participating in an earlier team event that could have helped another U.S. Olympian, Chad Hedrick, win a record-tying five gold medals. Without Davis, the team was eliminated in quarterfinal competition.

For the record, Davis is not the first Black to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics. In the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City, Vonetta Flowers won as part of a two-woman bobsled team and Jerome Iginla, a Black Canadian, was a member of the gold-winning Canadian hockey team. Davis is the first Black to win an individual gold medal.

In the 1,000-meter event that Davis won, Hedrick came in sixth. He refused to shake the winner’s hand and told reporters, “Shani skated fast. That’s about all I’ll say.” At another point, he said: “I’m happy for Joey [Cheek, the silver medallist].”

The bad-mouthing didn’t stop with the players.

One of the U.S. coaches, Eric Heiden, said of Davis, “He is not a team player.” Many could have said the same about Heiden, the winner of five gold medals in 1980 at Lake Placid. Because he was not chosen as the final torchbearer at the 2002 Opening Ceremonies in Salt Lake City, Heiden refused to take part in the event.

It was a Dutchman, Erben Wennemars, who won a bronze in the 2003 Olympics, that came to Davis’ defense.

“Shani Davis is a fantastic champion,” Wennemars said. “For him, the pressure was high as it could get. Whatever the U.S. (thinks) about Shani Davis doesn’t matter. He’s the Olympic champion now, so he was right.”

Davis now lives in Canada, where presumably he won’t have to deal with as many backward attitudes and petty jealousies.

Ironically, Shani Davis’ success has given more visibility to a controversy surrounding Bryant Gumble.

Gumbel, created a stir on his “Real Sports with Bryant Gumble” program on HBO. Dismissing the Winter Olympics with uncharacteristic candor, Gumble said: “So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world’s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of Blacks that make the Winter Games look like a GOP convention.”

That opened the floodgates.

Newsbusters.org, a conservative Web site committed to “exposing and combating liberal media bias,” posted the headline: “Shani Davis’s Gold Medal Makes Bryant Gumbel Look Even More Foolish.” It continued, “Nice timing, Bryant. Do you need some help removing that foot from you mouth?”

The posts on the message board were even more critical.

“I wonder if the NBA basketball court looks like the DNC convention to Gumball?” asked one reader, self-identified as “Realamericansvc.”

Another one wrote, “Hey Bryant Gumbel: We STILL haven’t gotten an ‘update’ from you on how now that new ski resort in Mozambique is doing or how the Angolan hockey team is progressing. Cat got your tongue, you bigoted prick?

“OH, and just do that you ‘get it’: American black athletes are traditionally not drawn to winter Olympic games because (1) yes, they are expensive to participate in and many black families (even middle class ones) just don’t have the cash you do to send their kids off to Aspen for moguls training, and (2) most young black athletes (even the ones whose families CAN afford it) are more drawn to basketball, football, and baseball than cross country skiing, figure skating and curling. So not only have we established that you are a BIGOTED PRICK, we have also established that you are an IGNORANT one at that.”

Another wrote, “…But let Rush Limbaugh (when he was on ESPN) make an innocuous comment criticizing the sports media’s inflated expectations of some black quarterbacks – which in the end, ends up hurting, not helping them – and you’d have thought Rush was calling for a slave market sale to be held in downtown Philadelphia.”

The Web site, outsports.com, observed: “We’re not alone in complaining about bias at Torino. Anybody who doubts that racism is rampant in winter sports should follow the hateful thread in a landslide of Shani Davis postings to message boards during the last few days. The anti’s are boiling over not just because they think he’s selfish, but because he’s black.”

What a sad commentary on society.