Head bigger than heart?

TORINO — He was doing fine. Moments earlier, he'd collected his third medal of the Torino Games — a silver to complete his Olympic set after winning gold and bronze in earlier races.

After that he'd circled the speedskating oval waving the American flag, received his flowers on the podium and answered various questions at the post-race press conference with just enough deflection and diplomacy — and even a hint of humility when he called Eric Heiden "a freak of nature" — to appear that he finally got it.

He was almost to the finish line. It appeared he had sealed the deal.

Forgiveness comes easily at an Olympics, especially after you've won your third medal.

But then he did a Jacobellis, a maneuver named in honor of American snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis who earlier in these Olympics momentarily forgot where she was and fell inches from victory.

In the last question at the last media gathering of his first very loud, very prolific and very controversial Olympics, Chad Hedrick was asked by a Dutch woman journalist how he'd managed to hold off Dutch champion Carl Verheijen in their race for the silver medal.

That's when Hedrick looked down at the left side of his chest, pulled out his USA jersey with one hand and tapped on it with the other.

"Right here," he said. "That's how. My heart's bigger than anyone else's. If other people had been out there feeling the way I did today, they wouldn't have been on the podium."

Normally, it's considered good form if you let other people talk about the size of your heart.

Hedrick, a converted roller skater who comes from Spring, Texas, marched into the 2006 Olympics like it was a Texas-Texas A&M football game. Before it even began he talked about the possibility of becoming the first speedskater since Eric Heiden to win five gold medals.

When his quest for five died in his second event, the team pursuit, he blamed it on teammate Shani Davis for not participating.

When Davis responded to that by beating Hedrick in the next race, at 1,000 meters, Hedrick didn't congratulate Davis, and when Italy's Enrico Fabris beat both of the Americans at 1,500 meters, Hedrick said Davis had betrayed him.

People started calling them Shaq and Kobe.