Chad Hedrick is credited with revolutionizing inline skating through a technique called “the double push.” It helped him become acknowledged as the greatest inline racer ever.
When Hedrick tried that technique on ice, it seemed at first as if he were pushing doubly hard and going half as fast.
Derek Parra, KC Boutiette and Jennifer Rodriguez, other former inline stars who had become top U.S. long-track speedskaters, showed Hedrick how to go from there, making the transition in technique from the streets to the ice easier than it had been for them.
The result became something revolutionary Sunday in Hamar, Norway, where Hedrick became just the third U.S. man to win the World All-Around Speedskating Championships in their 111-year history. After barely 18 months as a long-tracker, he ended the Dutch skaters’ nine-year winning streak.
Chicagoan Shani Davis was right behind Hedrick, giving the United States an unprecedented 1-2 finish in a competition traditionally considered the sport’s grandest prize. Davis, 20, is the first African-American skater to win a senior all-around medal.
“Derek and KC [dragged] me into the sport,” Hedrick said via telephone Sunday, “and I was very fortunate to have them point me in the right direction.”
Hedrick, with 150.478 points, and Davis, with 150.726, broke the world record of 151.691 set last month by Mark Tuitert of the Netherlands, who was fifth.
Davis was ahead until the final few laps of the 10,000 meters, last of four races in the two-day competition, where a factored composite of times determines results. To win, Davis would have needed to skate only three seconds faster than he did in the 10,000, a 13-minute-plus race.
“Being so close makes it a little disappointing not to win,” Davis said. “But I just couldn’t quite hold down the lap times at the end of the 10,000.”
The two other U.S. men to win the all-around were Eric Flaim in 1988 and the legendary Eric Heiden, now the speedskating team doctor, from 1977-79.
“I knew I had improved a lot in the past three months,” Hedrick said. “It was more than I thought, I guess.”
Hedrick, 26, had tried speedskating in 1997 but quit after less than a season because of what he felt was resistance to inliners.
“A lot of the coaches were closed-minded,” Hedrick said.
Hedrick returned to the ice in the fall of 2002 when it was clear inline skating would not become an Olympic sport soon, if ever. He was further motivated by watching on TV during an inline event in Las Vegas as Parra won 2002 Olympic gold medal in the 1,500 at Salt Lake City.
Parra, 2002 all-around bronze medalist, was 11th Sunday, while Boutiette took seventh. Rodriguez won the 500 and 1,500 and took fourth overall in the women’s competition, won by Dutchwoman Renate Groenewald.
“Chad was born to skate,” Parra said Sunday. “Put him on a bike, and he can’t cycle. Take him out to run, and he can’t run. But put him on skates, and he floats like a cloud.”
Hedrick began as a hockey player in the Houston suburb of Spring and played from ages 4 to 17. Since his family owned a roller rink, he took up that sport at 2 and won more than 50 world titles as an inliner.
“I’ve put inline aside,” Hedrick said. “It’s all about the [2006] Olympics now.”
Hedrick’s best medal chances would be in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters, races in which he finished second at the all-around meet. He was fifth in the shorter races, the 500 and 1,500 meters.
Davis won the 1,500 and was third in the 500, fourth in the 5,000 and fifth in the 10,000.
“I didn’t think Chad was ready yet to do this,” U.S. coach Tom Cushman said. “I knew the talent was there, but he also had the finesse. In the 5,000, he didn’t look like a converted inliner but an ice skater.”
Inliners frequently are unable to translate the power necessary for skating on tracks or streets into an efficient, gliding stroke on ice. In the past, many ice skating coaches tried to transform inliners’ styles completely, but the success of Parra, Olympic medalist Rodriguez and her husband, Boutiette, has changed the approach.
“Inline made Chad extremely powerful,” Cushman said. “We wanted to take that power and make subtle changes so he could use it on ice.”
Davis also has a transition issue. A 2002 Olympian in short-track speedskating, he is determined to be the first to compete in both at the same Olympics. He immediately returns to short-track for the Feb. 26-29 U.S. championships, the qualifying meet for March’s world championships.
“Pretty much all the skaters think Shani could be one of the greatest if he stuck with long-track,” Parra said.”But he likes the chaos and the tragedy of short-track and says he finds long-track boring sometimes.”
