It was a feel-good story for a few hours: luge veteran Erin Hamlin gets the chance to enter her last Olympics carrying the US flag into the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Games, winning that distinction after a vote by some of her fellow athletes. And then Shani Davis tweeted.

With that, the entire process was called into controversy. The tweet posted to Davis’ account said the process by which Hamlin won was executed “dishonorably,” and included a reference to Black History Month raising the question of whether the speedskater was suggesting that race played a role in the decision. Davis is black, Hamlin is white.

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“I am an American and when I won the 1000m in 2010 I became the first American to 2-peat in that event,” wrote Davis on Twitter. “@TeamUSA dishonorably tossed a coin to decide its 2018 flag bearer. No problem. I can wait until 2022. #BlackHistoryMonth2018”

Shani Davis (@ShaniDavis) I am an American and when I won the 1000m in 2010 I became the first American to 2-peat in that event. @TeamUSA dishonorably tossed a coin to decide its 2018 flag bearer. No problem. I can wait until 2022. #BlackHistoryMonth2018 #PyeongChang2018 pic.twitter.com/dsmTtNkhJs

US speedskater Joey Mantia was more circumspect. “We feel strongly toward Shani and they felt strongly for Erin,” Mantia said. “That’s just that.”

Hamlin and Davis were among eight nominees for the flagbearer role, and athletes from each of the eight winter sports federations – bobsled and skeleton; ski and snowboarding; figure skating; curling; biathlon; hockey; speedskating and luge represented those nominees in a ballot that took place on Wednesday night.

The final vote was deadlocked at 4-4. Hamlin won a coin toss, the predetermined method of picking a winner if all else failed in the athlete-led process. The US Olympic Committee confirmed the tie, and that voters knew if the tie couldn’t be broken by them the coin toss would have to occur.

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Davis was certainly a worthy candidate. He is now a five-time Olympian, with two gold medals and two silver medals in his collection. It could not be determined if Davis posted the tweet himself, or if anyone else with access to his account may have. Davis’ mother, Cherie, said she was unaware of the tweet until an AP reporter spoke to her by phone. “I know something about a coin toss, he told me last night,” she said on Thursday. “I don’t know anything else. Is that all?”



Hamlin is a four-time Olympian, a winner of a bronze medal at the 2014 Sochi Games, a two-time world champion and a winner of 23 World Cup medals. Despite that resume, Hamlin who is retiring after the Olympics never thought she would be the pick. In December, when asked in an interview if she thought it would be possible, Hamlin laughed. “To me, that always seems to be a really, really big-name person,” Hamlin said at the time.

This is not the first time Davis has been part of an Olympic controversy.

In 2006 Davis became the first African American to win an individual gold medal at a Winter Games but decided not to take part in the team pursuit and raised the ire of team-mate Chad Hedrick. Their animosity toward one another was obvious at a news conference, when Hedrick brought up the team pursuit and Davis stormed out of the room.