Thursday, February 18

Girl, You Gon' Think I Invented Speedskating!

I remember hearing about Shani Davis back in 2006. A Black speedskater, WOW! A Black Gold Medal Winner in the Winter Olympics, WOW! But I'll admit that it slipped my mind to really pay attention. Fast forward to 2010.
I'm sitting in a restaurant with a friend & there are tvs all around us. We're taking them ALL in... when I say to her: "HEY, that skater is BLACK!" We catch a glipse of him as he removes his hood and skates off the ice... Then It occurs to me I had heard of him. But I couldn't remember his name. I found him because Google is AWESOME and u can pretty much type in any random words & come up with something!

*sidebar*I dare you to try it: go to "The Google"
and type in your mother's maiden name,
the color of your shirt, the name of your first pet
and see if you don't come up with 27 pages of stuff...
Don't worry... I'll wait... lol. *end sidebar*

So I read up on him and refresh my memory and it turns out, Shani is what Malcolm Gladwell would call an Outlier! His life and the cosmos aligned to bring him to where he is today. With his 10,000 hours of practice starting at the age of 6, Shani is definitely the Subject Matter Expert on speedskating. Just a brief bio on Shani: he was rollerskating just after he could walk, he was DUSTING grown-ups in the roller rink on Chicago's Southside when he was three, he took up ice skating after a suggestion from a coach, and shortly after that his mom started working for a lawyer whose son was deep into speedskating. 1, 2, 3 just like that... he's the best! In 2006, he was the first black to win a gold medal in a Winter Olympics individual event. And he was the first PERSON to win the 1000m Speedskating gold 2 Olympic games in a row!

Some will say he is quirky, and kind of hard on himself considering him not doing so well in the 5000m and walking away from the 500m. But what remains is this and this:
Plus he's cute!
Please note: I am WELL aware that he is missing his 'stache... I am going to assume it makes him more aerodynamic and add him to the EXCEPTIONS LIST with Obama and Denzel, thanks!

1 comment:

Eb the Celeb said...

lol @ plus he's cute