Fred Bowen's "The Score" column,
Friday, February 24, 2006, Washington Post

As Teammates, Ice Guys Finish Last

Sometimes grown-ups tell kids to "act your age." Boy, I wish some grown-up would tell Shani Davis and Chad Hedrick to act their age.

Davis and Hedrick are the U.S. speedskaters who for the last week at the Olympics in Turin, Italy, have been fighting like fifth-graders on the playground. Hedrick said that Davis was a bad teammate because he chose not to skate with the U.S. team in a team event. Davis said that it was none of Hedrick's beeswax and that he, Davis, wanted to concentrate on skating the 1,000-meter race. (He won gold in that event.)

At a news conference after the two finished behind Italian Enrico Fabris in the 1,500 meters (Davis won the silver medal, Hedrick the bronze), Davis said it would have been nice if Hedrick had shaken his hand after the 1,000-meter race. Hedrick brought up the team pursuit race again, saying that Davis might have cost the American team, which included Hedrick, a medal. About the only thing the two didn't do was stick their tongues out at each other.

Look, both Davis and Hedrick are terrific skaters. Both won gold medals at this Olympics. And they can be nice guys sometimes. Davis was a good sport when he skated around the rink with Fabris after the Italian skater beat him. But Davis and Hedrick sure get on each other's nerves.

Of course, there is no law that you have to like your teammates. Remember, Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant hardly spoke to each other even while the Los Angeles Lakers were winning three National Basketball Association titles. Things got so bad between those two superstars that the Lakers traded Shaq to the Miami Heat.

But even Shaq and Kobe made up. Shaq said that NBA legend Bill Russell told him that it was silly for him to be acting like a kid around Kobe. So Shaq went over to Kobe during a recent game and started talking to his former teammate.

That's what Davis and Hedrick should do -- talk to each other. My guess is that they will never be best buddies, but at least they can promise to stop acting like spoiled brats in public.

If Davis and Hedrick need lessons in how to act at the Olympics, they should ask teammate Joey Cheek. He's a gold and silver medalist on the U.S. speedskating team, and he has been all smiles at this Olympics.

But more important, Cheek announced that he is giving the bonus money ($40,000) he will get for winning his medals to Right to Play, a charity that uses sports to help children in the poorest parts of the world. Cheek's medal money will go to kids in the Darfur region of Sudan, a country in Africa.

It seems that Cheek has figured out that there are more important things than who wins what medal or who shakes whose hand after a race: things such as helping kids who have lost almost everything because of a civil war in their country.

It seems that there is one Olympic speedskater representing the United States who not only knows how to act his age, but also how to behave like a champion.