Happy Hump Day POU!
Today we feature Gold Medalist Speed Skater Shani Davis.
Davis was born in Chicago, Illinois. His father, Reginald Shuck, picked his son’s name (Shani) out of a Swahili dictionary. The English translation is a mixture of “light” and “weight”. Davis learned to roller skate at the age of 2. By the time he was 3, he could skate so quickly that he had to be slowed down by the rink’s skate guards. Davis’s mother worked for a local lawyer and speed skating official whose son was an elite level speed skater. At the lawyer’s suggestion, his mother enrolled her son at the Robert Crown Center in nearby Evanston when he was six years old. Within two months, Davis was winning regional races in his age groups, earning the admiration of his friends and Northbrook rivals alike.
Determined that her son reach his maximum potential, his mother would wake Davis up in the mornings to run a mile on a nearby track to build up his endurance. In order to be closer to his skating club, she and Davis moved from the neighborhood of Hyde Park to Rogers Park.
At 16, Davis was invited to Lake Placid, New York to participate in a development program for young speed skaters. After training there for a year, Davis decided to pursue his Olympic dreams and moved to Marquette, Michigan, to further his training. There, he would graduate from Marquette Senior High School, where he ran track his senior year.
Davis earned spots on both the long track and short track teams at the 1999 junior world championship, simultaneously making the national team. In 2000, he made history by becoming the first U.S. skater to make the long and short track teams at the Junior World Teams, a feat he would accomplish again in 2001 and 2002. His height has always made him unique among short trackers, as most are much shorter, making it easier to race low to the ice. Shani would go on to win a bronze medal in the Team Relay at the 2005 World Short Track Championships in Beijing, China, shared by U.S. teammates Apolo Ohno, Rusty Smith and Alex Izykowski.
At the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, Davis became the first Black athlete (from any nation) to win a gold medal in an individual sport at the Olympic Winter Games, winning the speedskating 1000 meter event. He also won a silver medal in the 1500 meter event. At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, he duplicated the feat, becoming the first man to successfully defend the 1000 meter gold medal, and repeating as 1500 meter silver medalist.
Davis won the all-around World Allround Championships in both 2005 and 2006, after winning the silver medal in 2004. In 2009 he won the World Sprint Championships in Moscow, the site of his first World Allround Championship victory. By winning he became the second male skater to have won both the Sprint and Allround in their career, after Eric Heiden. He has won six World Single Distance Championships titles, three at 1500 meters (in 2004, 2007 and 2009) and three at 1000 meters (in 2007, 2008 and 2011), and he lead the United States to its first and only World Championship gold medal in the Team Pursuit event in 2011. He has won nine career Overall World Cup titles, five at 1000 meters (in 2006, 2008–10, and 2012) and four at 1500 meters (2008–2011). He has 53 career individual victories on the ISU Speed Skating World Cup circuit (through Jan. 2013), placing him second all-time among men.
Davis has set a total of eight world records, three of them current (through Jan. 2013): 1:06.42 over 1000 meters, 1:41.04 at 1500 meters, and 145.742 in allround samalog points. He also sits atop the world Adelskalender list (since March 2009), which ranks the all-time fastest speed skaters by personal best times in the four World Allround Championship distances.