Shani Davis won a gold medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver by skating in circles really fast.

Disaster was averted in Vancouver for speed skater Shani Davis when the gold medal winner's emergency parachute deployed at the end of the 1,000 meter event (katchop)

Davis, in fact, became the first long-tracker in Olympic history to win back-to-back 1,000s but, unlike his command performance in Turin four years ago, this one had a high degree of difficulty. Skating in the last lap — and before a crowd that included comedian Steven Colbert, IOC president Jacques Rogge, VANOC president John Furlong and Premier Gordon Campbell — Davis trailed eventual silver medallist Tae-Bum Mo from Korea by a quarter of a second after the first split, but made up the difference with the second-fastest final lap of the competition.

He would win the gold by 18/100ths of a second with a time of 1:08.94, more than 3.5 seconds slower than his world-record time as the Richmond facility again lived up to its Slowval nickname.

Original Photos Quartermilestones, Yahoo