A Different Approach

NAGANO, Japan —  Athletes can get a little intense at the Olympics. For most, after all, it is their big shot.

Then there’s KC Boutiette. His hair is one color, his beard and mustache another, and neither is what he was born with.

He has a stud in his tongue, a little circle earring in one ear and two of them in the other.

Most people would not take him for an athlete.

Most people would be wrong.

He may do things his way--he’s the only skater who uses a track start, with hands on the ice, for instance--and his attitudes may not be those of the typical athlete, but Boutiette is most definitely an athlete.

He did, after all, skate an Olympic-record time the other day in the men’s 1,500-meter speedskating race. It didn’t last long, but even short-lived Olympic records are not skated by non-athletes.

He likes other things too, but you understand how deeply into his sport he is when you know that he traveled 30 hours on a bus to get to the Pettit National Ice Center, the national speedskating training site in Milwaukee, because, as an in-line skater, he thought he could become a speedskater. He was 23 at the time. Most speedskaters start as little kids.

And Boutiette became a speedskater. Less than a year after that bus trip, he had made the U.S. Olympic team and was skating in Lillehammer. He didn’t skate well, by Olympic standards, but he skated.

Here? Boutiette, 27, is having the time of his life. He’s competing, of course, and he wants to win, but he’s also enjoying the Olympic experience.

“The thing is,” he said, “if five years ago, you’d asked what I’d be doing, I would have told you, ‘Probably digging a ditch.’ And here I am at the Olympics and I just took fifth place. That’s great for me. Getting fifth place is pretty damn good.

“In Lillehammer, all I could do was laugh. Now, I’m proud of myself. I wasn’t disappointed. . . . For someone like myself, with my mentality--I’m a good loser. I’m a great loser!--I can lose and not even be bitter about it. Nothing’s disappointing to me. I’m doing the best I can.”

So when these Games and this season are over, will Boutiette redouble his efforts in an attempt to become an even better speedskater?

“I’m going back to in-line skating,” he said. “And then I’ll probably go skate ice marathons in Holland next fall. I’ll probably still do the World Cups [next season], but I want to have fun this summer. When I made the Olympic team last time, I went two years nonstop, as hard as I could go.”

He might have some fun in his future, but he’s planning on another Olympics, by which time he will be two months shy of 32.

“I’ve got it all planned out for the next four years,” he said.

And he has some immediate plans too.

“In the 1,000 [Sunday], I’m going to do great.”

A little different, but no less an Olympian.