Winter Olympics: Tuitert Surprises Davis To Win 1500m Speed Skating

The toughest status in any sport is that of being a living legend. To enter any type of competition with the thought that winning silver will feel more like losing gold is too much pressure for any athlete, no matter how great, to handle.

And although Shani Davis might feel despondent tonight, having finished second in two consecutive Olympic 1500m where he was favored, his great achievements should not be forgotten. Four medals, two gold, two silver, earned over the two most competitive distances in speed skating, is phenomenal.

In the ten Olympic Winter Games where both the 1000m and 1500m were on the menu, only three other men have managed to combine podium places in both in the same year (Eric Heiden, Gaetan Boucher, and Ids Postma, all greats of the sport, are the others). And most impressively Davis has done it twice, which is unparalleled.

But tonight belongs to Mark Tuitert, 29, of the Netherlands, who rode a perfect race to a time of 1m 45.57s, besting Davis by 0.53s and Norwegian bronze medalist Havard Bøkko by 0.56s. Chad Hedrick, the only man considered capable of beating Davis, finished 6th, over a second off the pace.

As Davis, skating in the final pair, failed to beat Tuitert's earlier mark, Tuitert teared up and nearly collapsed with joy. For almost five minutes he could do nothing but hold his head and shake it in utter disbelief. By beating a legend, he had become one. He composed himself enough to skate a few laps of honor, while the many orange-clad Dutch fans performed an impromptu rendition of the national anthem.

Tuitert's career has been a difficult one, filled with disappointments and near misses. After he finished fifth in the 1000m three nights ago, it was he who was despondent, remarking that he had felt great going into the race, but small mistakes cost him a podium place. At the time he commented that he'd better well make up for it in the 1500.

Also like Davis, Mark Tuitert is a former all-rounder who has refocused his talents on the 1000 and 1500m exclusively. But Tuitert's all-round career was far less decorated than Davis'.

Tuitert burst onto the Dutch all-rounding scene as an 18-year-old by winning the World Junior Championships and finishing fourth in the Dutch Championships behind three veterans and Olympic champions. He was of course proclaimed as the next great Dutch all-rounder, and much of Tuitert's early career was in pursuit of realizing that goal.

But real success never came in all-rounding, his only major win coming in the 2004 European championships. He never quite managed to master the longer 5km and 10km distances, always relying on a stronger 1500m to try to carry him to gold.

After finishing disappointing eighth at the '07 European Championships, where he went with high hopes, he was inconsolable. At 26, he had spent half his career trying to become something he simply wasn't capable of.

The Olympics hadn't treated him well either. After flubbing in the Dutch Olympic trials in both 2002 and 2006, he was nevertheless granted the lifeline of Olympic participation by being selected to the Dutch Team Pursuit team in Turin. The Dutch were the clear favorites to win gold, but a trip by Sven Kramer in the semis resulted in 'only' a bronze.

After '07 Tuitert then made the difficult decision to abandon all-rounding and focus only on the shorter distances. The decision was difficult for him, it had after all been his lifelong dream to be all-round champion. But success didn't come easy over his new distances, mainly because his new career path coincided with the rise of one of the greatest middle-distance skaters ever, Shani Davis.

He now had to watch as a better man won world title after world title and set records he could never break, having to be content with only an occasional podium finish.

But Tuitert never stopped working and never stopped believing, and on February 20, 2010 all his work culminated in the perfect 1500m. He started fast, faster than he usually does, and attacked the race like he's rarely done before.

Usually careful and afraid of making the small skating errors which have plagued his career, Tuitert skated with abandon, pouring every ounce of frustration and disappointment into the race, knowing that it probably was his last chance to win an individual gold.

And the result was perfection, which not even the great Shani Davis could top. Tuitert spent several sweet moments embracing his wife following the race. Davis, though clearly disappointed, was classy as always, remarking to Tuitert afterwards that "he was the king," a reference to the Dutch, who call the 1500m the "King's distance."

Tuitert career has been long and difficult, littered with infinitely more disappointment than success. But tonight, for one time, he was the champion; the man who did the impossible; the man who beat the legend.