Turin, Italy ? Say what you want about Shani Davis. Call him a trailblazer. Accuse him of selfishness. Snicker at him for being a momma’s boy.

Just don’t forget this: He’s also an Olympic champion.

Davis became the first black to claim an individual gold medal in Winter Olympic history Saturday, winning the 1,000-meter speedskating race and justifying his decision to focus on himself first, his team second.

Joey Cheek made it a 1-2 American finish, adding a silver to his victory in the 500.

“I’m one of a kind,” Davis said, fully aware of how much he stands out in the mostly white sport. “I’m a different type of person. I have a different charisma. A lot of people don’t understand me.”

That much was clear from the racially charged messages to his personal Web site – “people saying they hoped I would fall, break my leg, using the n-word,” he said.

Even the great Eric Heiden had some choice words for America’s newest gold medalist, regarding his decision to skip the team pursuit.

Shani Davis drives to the finish of the men's 1,000-meter speedskating race at the Winter Olympics. Davis won Saturday in Turin, Italy, and became the first black to win an individual gold medal in a Winter Games.

“He is going his own way,” said Heiden, who won five gold medals at the 1980 Lake Placid Games. “He’s very different to a lot of speedskaters, and we have to respect that, but he is not a team player.”

Maybe not, but the 23-year-old from Chicago’s South Side is building a heck of a rivalry with Texan Chad Hedrick.

Hedrick won the first speedskating gold with a dominating performance in the 5,000. Davis got him back in the 1,000, the weakest of Hedrick’s individual events. They’ll face off again Tuesday in the 1,500 – an event Davis ruled until Hedrick snatched away the world record.

“I’m not trying to beat Chad,” Davis insisted. “I’m trying to beat everyone.”

Hedrick, who had only skated the 1,000 a half-dozen times in his career, put up an early time that stood until Davis bested it in the 19th of 21 pairs with a clocking of 1 minute, 8.89 seconds. Four other skaters passed Hedrick as well, leaving him in sixth place.

Erben Wennemars of the Netherlands claimed the bronze, which was fine with Hedrick.

“Once Shani beat me, I didn’t care if I got a bronze,” he said. “I’m here to win. It’s all or nothing.”

The testy relationship between the two U.S. stars was apparent after the race. Hedrick didn’t even bother congratulating Davis.

“Shani skated fast today,” Hedrick said. “That’s about all I have to say about that.”

Davis came under fire for skipping the team pursuit – especially when a Hedrick-led squad was knocked out by Italy in the quarterfinals, doomed by a slow skater who might not have been on the ice if Davis was available. The loss denied Hedrick a chance to go after Heiden’s record of records, those five golds at Lake Placid.

But Davis, world record holder in the 1,000, wanted to focus on his signature event. And his victory – a third straight individual triumph for the U.S. men at the Olympic oval – means that Hedrick’s quest would have come up short, even with a gold in the team pursuit.

After Davis became the first guy to break 1:09 on the slow Turin ice, there were still two more pairs to go – four skaters capable of knocking him out.

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.”