Cheek went in the next group and came the closest, fading a bit at the end for a time of 1:09.16. Five days earlier, he dominated the shortest race on the schedule and donated his $25,000 bonus to a charity run by speedskating icon Johann Olav Koss.

This time, he’ll hand over a $15,000 check to Koss. Dutch stars Wennemars and Jan Bos went in the final pair, but neither caught the Americans. Wennemars grabbed the bronze in 1:09.32.

“I’m just very happy about my race,” Davis said. “More than anything, the things I trained for, I was right about.”

Davis showed no immediate emotion after the last two skaters failed to beat his time. He was cooling down in the warmup lane, skating slowly with his arms behind his back.

Finally, he smiled and waved to the crowd, picking up a stuffed bear that a fan tossed on the ice. As he came to the other end of the rink, Davis found Wennemars waiting. The friendly rivals gave each other a big hug in front of the orange-clad, predominantly Dutch crowd, prompting the biggest cheer of the night.

“I like him as a person, I like him as a speedskater,” Wennemars said. “What the United States thinks about him doesn’t matter because Shani is the Olympic champion, so he is right.”

Davis, wearing a Chicago White Sox cap afterward, grew up wanting to skate. He shrugged off friends who wondered why a black kid from the city of Michael Jordan and Da Bears would want to don a tight-fitting suit and compete with a bunch of white dudes in a fringe sport.

“Maybe I can be the Michael Jordan of speedskating,” he said.

His choice of sports wouldn’t be the last time he bucked the norm.

Davis’ mother, Cherie, has a long-running feud with the folks at U.S. Speedskating, believing they worked against her only child when he was younger because of the color of his skin. The organization says that’s not so, but Davis doesn’t train with the national program, frequently complains about a lack of marketing opportunities and gladly lets his mother fight his battles.

He’s not even sure that being the first black to win an individual winter gold is that big a deal because of speedskating’s obscurity outside of the Olympics.

“It’s a breakthrough,” Davis said, “but it’s what people make of it.”

He seemed to be doing his own thing in Turin, avoiding the media and the rest of the team. There was even talk he would skip the medalist news conference, though he showed up and stayed long past the allotted time.

“If he feels it’s him against the rest of the world, then it’s him who pitted himself against the world,” American teammate Casey FitzRandolph said.

Vonetta Flowers became the first black to capture winter gold at the Salt Lake City Games four years ago. She was a pusher on the two-woman bobsled team, someone who helps get the machine going and hops along for the ride.

Davis won this gold entirely on his own.

“If you put your mind to it and you believe it, you can achieve it,” he said. “You cannot give up — even if the road is a tough road.”

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