Paul Oberjuerge: Shani vs. Chad; My Take

The basis of the rivalry is this: Two guys going for the same thing, mastery of the middle distances of the sport.

As Shani said Tuesday, after beating Chad (but finishing second to Enrico Fabris of Italy): "There's only one spot at the top of the podium."

Chad and Shani get in each other's way. It's as simple as that. One guy's success means the other's failure.

Some people apparently are casting this in terms of race, but that's cliche and simplistic. It's easy to do because Shani is from Chicago's Southside and says things like "wif" (for with) and "da world" for (the world) ... and Chad is from suburban Houston and has a cowboy drawl and his dad wears monstrous cowboy hats, and Laura Bush came to watch him win gold in the 5K ...

But that stuff just falls into our own prejudices. This is about two fine athletes, conditioned to success, in the prime of their careers, who know this is their big shot at attention ... who keep getting in each other's way.

They say they hardly knew each other before this Olympics, which people don't seem to believe, but it's true. Shani lives and trains in Calgary. Chad lives and trains in Utah. They meet only at skate events. They don't hang, etc. They rarely compete against each other, because in speedskate you're paired with one other guy, and Chad and Shani will be just two of maybe 40 guys in the competition.

Things warmed up here when Shani skipped the team pursuit. Chad was counting on that as one of his five medals. Maybe one of his five GOLD medals. Without Shani, the Yanks went out in the first round. If Shani skates, they medal and maybe win the whole thing. Shani didn't do it because he didn't want to do ANYTHING that could hurt his chances for gold in the 1,000, which was three days later. And he won gold in the 1,000, so maybe he knew what he was doing.

So, yeah, three days later, Shani wins the 1,000. Chad is ticked off because 1) he lost, 2) he lost to Shani and 3) Shani ditched him in the team pursuit. So he doesn't shake Shani's hand, doesn't congratulate him, and just generally acts petulant.

Now, the media is on this. Really, there aren't that many breaking stories at Olympics, and it's a personality-driven event, and people run with the story. Especially the Chicago papers, because Shani is from there and implying this Texan guy is a racist is a really easy sell.

Some other issues: Shani really and truly seems do be a hard-core, traditional speedskate partisan. Which is weird, because he's from the inner-city and black, etc., and you wouldn't think he would gravitate to the "conservative" outlook on this.

But he does. He believes LONG-TRACK speedskating is a noble, tradition-steeped and classy sport. His hero is a Dutchman, 30-year-old Erben Wennemars. Dutch TV did a documentary on Shani last year in which it showed that Shani has a picture of Wennemars on his refrigerator door, so that whenever Shani is thinking of eating some junk food he can see Wennemars and think, "Would Erben eat ice cream?" And then he has an orange, instead.

(For this and other reasons, the Dutch fans love Shani, hate Chad.)

Shani is truly pained and discomfited that long-track can be sold as a mano-a-mano throwdown. He believes it's about a man vs. the clock, maybe a man vs. the field. But not about a man vs. another man. He even had a quote about that, Tuesday: "They have a name for that kind of racing. It's called short-track." Which long-trackers regard as a trash sport. (And yeah, I know Shani has dabbled more than a little in short-track.)

Then there's Chad. He loves to stir the pot. He says whatever pops into his head, and a lot of is boastful and self-congratulatory. Most of his career he's delivered on what he's promised, but here his predictions of imminent success have sounded mostly like "all hat, no cattle," as I think the saying goes in Texas.

He insists he never, ever said he wanted to win five gold here, but he didn't fight very hard when media ran with that angle. And now he's a little embarrassed that he's got only one gold and one bronze after four of his five events. BEFORE the Olympics he said he would consider "only" one gold a failure. "I consider winning 20 percent of my races as something not good." With only the 10K left, "not good" may be his final result here.

Anyway, he likes the attention the "rivalry" brought. He believes it's good for the sport, and he appears to be one of those guys who doesn't hold grudges. Like, he approaches this as if it were professional wrestling. You say stuff to drive the interest, drive the crowd, drive the audience, but we all know (wink-wink) it don't mean nothin', and I'll see you on the track, podner.

Also, Chad comes from an inline background. Something Shani has never done. And another form of skating long-track ice guys consider trashy. Maybe even worse than short-track. In inline, you bump a guy, and you try to cheat, work the edges, this and that. Long-track speed ... no, no. Very formal.

Anyway, this whole idea of promoting the sport is a common theme among speedskaters. They believe U.S. Speedskate does a crappy job of it. How can we have two or three (if you cound Joey Cheek) of the planet's best male speedskaters and they're making less in a year than ARod makes per game? They can't conceive it's because their sport just isn't popular and never will be, even if everyone raced naked. While juggling knives. And flaming torches.

Anyway, Chad was, in fact, ticked. But he doesn't seem to stay ticked. The "rivalry" that ensued, he views as a good thing for the sport.

Shani may be ticked, too, but he believes his sport is bigger than personalities. He believes in the traditional way of earning respect, the way the Dutch do it -- by putting up results. He likes the purity of it all, and the idea of a Him vs. Me angle, contrived or otherwise, really really upsets him. It pains him.

Anyway, no one should take any really serious lessons from this. There may be black-vs.-white flashpoints in sports, but I don't think this is one of them. If anything, this is more like "purist vs. populist."

As teammate Derek Parra said, after Shani and Chad went 2-3 in the 1,500: "I know they're ticked. Both of them. But not at each other. They're ticked because they didn't win."