Kramer has this field encircled

In the 5,000-meter race that opened the speedskating competition at the Richmond Olympic Oval, suspense was limited. The Netherlands’ Sven Kramer is staggeringly dominant in the event, a world record-holder and a three-time world champion.

Clockwork orange, indeed.

For these reasons and others, Shani Davis was not quite astonished when he learned of his pairing with Kramer on Saturday, one dominant star tethered to another for six minutes of maximum glitz.

“I had a feeling,” Davis said, smiling. “I told myself, if I’m in the first group, I’m probably going to get paired with Sven. Then they came up to me: ‘You’re paired with the big dog!’ I go, OK, that’s OK, I guess. What can I do about it?”

Little, as it turned out, but then Davis wasn’t exactly isolated in that. On a surface not entirely accommodating to velocity, Kramer nonetheless set an Olympic record with his gold medal-winning time of 6:14:60, with a trio of Americans left to shrug at the results.

Chad Hedrick, the 5,000-meter gold medalist in Turin, finished 11th. Davis, not projected as a favorite, stayed with Kramer for a bit and then slid to 12th. Trevor Marsicano’s 14th-place effort rounded out the U.S. finishes, but no one truly tested Kramer, who sprinted cross-ice and leaped a barrier for a teary post-race celebration in the pro-Dutch din.

“I worked my [butt] off to win this medal,” Kramer said. “It’s an amazing feeling. I worked for four years for it. I only lost once. Now I [had] to finish it and I did.”

South Korea’s Seung-Hoon Lee, barely two years into long-track events, took a surprising silver, just 2.35 seconds off Kramer’s pace. Russia’s Ivan Skobrev won bronze.

The U.S. took a heaving breath of relief.

The affable Hedrick flatly pronounced Saturday as “the last 12 laps I’m going to do,” and the bubbly Davis said he was “satisfied.” Both U.S. linchpins opted to look to the 1,000-meter and 1,500-meter events while considering the 5,000 as mere prelude.

“I figure if I can make it through 12 laps, I should probably most likely be able to make it through two laps and three laps,” Davis said. “Sven is a specialist in that race. I gave him a good run for it for about four or five laps, but there’s seven or six laps to go. Real typical Shani, I just hit the wall. But it’s better now than later.”

Hedrick may have invested more in actually winning despite the long odds -- he does more cross-training for the 5,000-meter length than does Davis -- and he made one last-minute technique switch in an attempt to combat the ice conditions.

But he was off-pace seemingly from the start and never quite recovered.

“I just thought the ice was so sticky I was going to skate more like an inline skater and use a higher cadence on the straightaways, rather than trying to glide, because the glide wasn’t there,” Hedrick said. “My pushes were much more frequent. I thought that was going to pay off. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out for me.”

Kramer, of course, worked everyone over. He won gold at the World Single Distance Championships at the same oval in 2009, and his world-record time was almost three seconds better than anyone else’s personal best.

Lingering on the infield to see if his time would hold up, Kramer was smiling wide with six laps left in the last race and delivering embraces with two laps left. Even while warming up, he received an ovation from orange-clad fans who probably sensed a coronation at hand. There wasn’t much doubt, really.

“He had to go out first and he had a whole bunch of sharpshooters behind him,” Davis said. “He did his thing. He didn’t leave any question.”

bchamilton@tribune.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Speedskating :: Men’s 5,000

*--* G: Sven Kramer (Netherlands) S: Seung-Hoon Lee (Korea) B: Ivan Skobrev (Russia) *--*