1. Shani Earl Davis is an American former speed skater.
47 Facts About Shani Davis
1. 2.
Shani Davis won a silver medal in the 1500 meter event.
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Shani Davis won the silver medal at the 2004 World Allround Speed Skating Championships.
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Shani Davis then proceeded to win the World Allround Championships in both 2005 and 2006.
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When Shani Davis won those events, he became the second male skater to win both the Sprint and Allround in his career, after Eric Heiden.
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Shani Davis has won six World Single Distance Championships titles, three at 1500 meters and three at 1000 meters, and he led the United States to its first and only World Championship gold medal in the Team Pursuit event in 2011.
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Shani Davis has won ten career Overall World Cup titles, six at 1000 meters and four at 1500 meters.
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Shani Davis held the top spot on the world Adelskalender list after taking the lead from Sven Kramer in March 2009 for a little over ten years until Patrick Roest surpassed him in March 2019.
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Shani Davis is a native of Chicago, Illinois, and trained at two US Olympic training facilities, the Pettit National Ice Center in West Allis, Wisconsin, and the Utah Olympic Oval in Salt Lake City, Utah.
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Shani Davis was born on Friday, August 13,1982, in Chicago, Illinois, to Reginald Shuck and Cherie Shani Davis.
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At 16, Shani Davis was invited to Lake Placid, New York, to participate in a development program for young speed skaters.
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Shani Davis earned spots on both the long track and short track teams at the 1999 junior world championship, simultaneously making the national team.
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Shani Davis's height has always made him unique among short trackers, who are much shorter.
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Shani Davis would go on to win a bronze medal in the Team Relay at the 2005 World Short Track Championships in Beijing, China, shared by US teammates Apolo Ohno, Rusty Smith and Alex Izykowski.
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In December 2001, Shani Davis was in Utah to compete for a spot on the 2002 Winter Olympics short track team.
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Teammates Apolo Ohno and Rusty Smith already had slots on the six-man team, and Ron Biondo was a lock for the third spot; Shani Davis needed to finish first in the final race to qualify.
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Ohno and Smith were both participating, and Ohno had been dominant; a win by Shani Davis seemed to be a long shot.
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Shani Davis became the first African-American skater to earn a spot on the team.
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For three days, Ohno, Smith and Shani Davis stood before an arbitration panel as three of their fellow skaters testified that they heard Ohno telling Smith that he was going to let Shani Davis win.
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Shani Davis pointed out that he did not need to win the race because he already had a spot on the team.
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Shani Davis wanted to be able to concentrate on both long track and short track.
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Shani Davis arrived in Salt Lake City for the 2002 Winter Olympics.
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Shani Davis became the only US skater to ever make both short track and long track junior world teams three years in a row.
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Shani Davis made the jump from junior competition to men's speed skating in 2003.
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In January 2004, Shani Davis became a North American champion for the second consecutive year.
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Shani Davis finished in second place overall in the 2004 World Allround Long Track Championships in Hamar, Norway.
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In March, Shani Davis won the 1500 m at the men's World Single Distance Championships in Seoul, finishing the race in 1:48.64 in March 2004.
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Shani Davis did not participate at the Olympic Trials in Salt Lake City in December 2005 because his performances in the Fall World Cup events had already pre-qualified him for the Olympic Team in the 1000 m, 1500 m and 5000 m events.
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Shani Davis won the gold medal in the 1000 m and the silver medal in the 1500 m in Turin.
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Shani Davis declined the invitation, wishing to focus on the individual events and allow the skaters who had not qualified for individual races a chance to skate.
31.
Cushman attributed the false reports suggesting Shani Davis had withdrawn from an event he was supposed to race to Cushman's own decision to list him as a substitute.
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Shani Davis made clear his desire to win the individual events he was focused on, and in the light of hindsight, with his two medals, that was the right decision.
33.
Shani Davis won the final 1000 m World Cup event of the 2006 season at Thialf, Heerenveen, with a time of 1:08.91, becoming the first skater to skate below 1:09 in Heerenveen and winning the overall World Cup on the 1000 meters.
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Shani Davis placed fourth overall in the 1500 meters World Cup, despite only competing in three of the five races.
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Shani Davis then defended his World Allround Championships title in Calgary in March 2006 with a world record allround score of 145.742.
36.
At the competition, Shani Davis was paired with teammate Chad Hedrick in the 1500 meter race, and dramatically broke Hedrick's own world record with a time of 1:42.68, which Shani Davis would later rebreak that year with a time of 1:42.32.
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Shani Davis placed third in 1000 m and won the 2009 World Sprint Speed Skating Championship in Moscow.
38.
At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Shani Davis competed in four long-track speed skating events: the 500,1000,1500 and 5000 meter races.
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All four of these events were held at the Richmond Olympic Oval, where Shani Davis had held the track record in the 1000 and 1500 meter races, setting those records in 2009.
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Shani Davis won the 1000-meter speed skating event, becoming the first man to win back-to-back 1000-meter Olympic speed skating gold medals and the only gold medal for speed skating from the United States at these games.
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Shani Davis won a silver medal at the 1500 m distance, being defeated for the gold medal by Mark Tuitert of the Netherlands.
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Shani Davis finished 12th in the 5000 meters and withdrew after a poor first race in the 500 meters.
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On February 13,2018, in the 1500-meter race, Shani Davis finished 19th at 1:46.74.
44.
On February 23,2018, in the 1000-meter race, Shani Davis finished 7th at 1:08.78.
45.
One day before the February 9 opening ceremonies for the 2018 Winter Olympics, Shani Davis Tweeted his displeasure with the process for choosing the American team flag bearer.
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Shani Davis announced his retirement from skating in November 2019.
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Shani Davis trained at the Olympic speedskating center in Marquette, Michigan, where as of February 2010 he was attending classes at Northern Michigan University.