Winter Olympic Profile / Kc Boutiette -- Kc Masterpiece

KC BOUTIETTE has gone from in-line skating in Tacoma to being in line for a medal in speedskating at the Olympics in Nagano, Japan. Along the way, he has changed the way the U.S. looks at the sport and the way the world looks at U.S. skaters.

This is what America's best male speedskater in the setting sun of the 20th century looks like:

He is wearing baggy, black snowboard pants. A loose, black-and-white soccer jersey. A goatee. Bleached, Clooney-cropped hair. A pierced tongue. A gold necklace and two gold-loop earrings. KC Boutiette is either cool or contagious. Or both.

He doesn't care. He has entered the Winter Olympics arena with style and verve, injecting life into a moribund vocation that could use attention.

Speedskating used to embody the wholesomeness of a Wisconsin dairy farm. The Olympic heroes were virtuous Midwesterners such as Bonnie Blair, Dan Jansen, Sheila Young and Eric Heiden.

Today the ice is spinning with legions of pulsating, in-your-face in-line skaters. Roller over Beethoven. And tell Tchaikovsky the news.

Never have the divergent worlds of ice and concrete intersected so profoundly as with Boutiette, a 27-year-old Tacoma man with the daring of Dennis Rodman but the sincerity of Ann Landers.

So, yes, KC to the rescue. At a Salt Lake Olympic media summit in October, Boutiette was interviewed by 40-something television reporters. As he entered each cubicle to face another intimate,

life-assessing discourse, the theme rarely strayed from the infatuation with his Gen-X appearance.

Boutiette's eyes twinkled before the hard, blanched light. His mouth had a devilish smirk. This was a game he knew how to play.

"This has been the greatest thing for this sport," Bill Cushman, U.S. Speedskating Association president, once said of Boutiette.

With the encouragement of Eric Flaim, an in-liner turned three-time Olympian, Boutiette tried the slick surface in a transformation that has entered Olympic lore.

He left Fort Collins, Colo., one November day in 1993 and arrived 30 hours later by bus in Milwaukee just to try the ice for cross-training purposes. He crashed on a futon at his Rollerblade manager's house. He tied blades to in-line skates because he didn't own ice skates. Two months later, he was a 1994 Olympian.

Those were heady times. But perhaps it was all too easy. The clean-cut kids who had given their hearts to reach the Olympics resented the interloper. They called it a fluke to lessen the blow.

In-line skating was considered a fringe sport, a recreation not worthy of serious athletic pursuit. Lauri Muir, editor of Fitness & Speed Skating Times, which follows both disciplines, said the U.S. Speedskating Association was shocked by the results.

"Everybody snubbed him," she said. "They looked down at him as an unsophisticated in-liner. He proved he could do it whether they liked him or not."

Which says everything you need to know about Boutiette.

"He had something to prove," said Dave Smessaert, Boutiette's Rollerblade manager, who lives in Milwaukee. "It's almost like someone saying you can't cut it. He wants to just prove everyone wrong. KC almost raced better when he had a little hostility or anger."

Flaim's and Boutiette's Olympic standing was an entree for other in-liners. Four of the 16 members of the long-track Olympic team are "bladers," including Boutiette's girlfriend, Jennifer Rodriguez of Miami.

"The in-line skaters who came over have given a little spark to the team," Boutiette said.

The traditionalists begrudgingly agree.

Blair, winner of six Olympic medals, approached Boutiette in Salt Lake to offer encouraging words.

"They've brought some depth to the distance events," she said of the bladers. "Being a little more Gen-X, that in one sense helps broaden our audience. There's something for everybody."

Not that the transition to ice is easy. Movements must be precise with the thin blades in a much more technically skilled discipline. In-liners can use power to overcome sloppy technique. Furthermore, speedskaters compete against the clock. In-liners compete against each other, and pushing and shoving is part of the strategy.

After the remarkably easy start, Boutiette nearly quit speedskating in frustration a year later. He used so much energy in making the '94 Olympic team, his performance in Norway was a disaster. He got sick before the Lillehammer Olympics and finished 39th in the 1,500 meters.

Afterward, Boutiette returned to the in-line circuit and won the 100-kilometer world championship. He became the first non-European to win a stage in the prestigious SSM international three-day race in 1994. The next year he won the race. But as he switched between sports he broke down.

And finally crashed. During the 1995 speedskating season, he went to Tacoma at Christmas and retired. OK, so he never told anyone at the time. But for a week, he did not answer the telephone when coaches called.

"I just wanted to be out of the limelight," Boutiette said. "I thought maybe I'd go into construction. I just wanted to do something different.

"I was a little lonely, a little frustrated with the way I was training. I was thrown back on the ice again for the second season and I was tired. I was just confused. "

He returned to Milwaukee to gather his belongings.

"I had to get them," he insisted. Because he was in town, he entered the U.S. trials for the '95-96 world team. He got sick again but qualified. Next stop: Europe.

"Then I woke up," Boutiette said. He decided to speedskate seriously. He quit competitive in-line skating and made Wisconsin his home.

Boutiette became one of the world's best speedskaters in the fallow years between Olympics. Last year, he was fourth overall at the World Allaround championships in Nagano. He placed second in the 1,500 meters. He broke the 1,500 world record last summer and held it for a day, a distinction he is proud of nonetheless. He still is the American record holder for the distance.

He no longer is considered the rink rat who serendipitously slipped onto an Olympic team.

"He's no less an athlete than the ice speedskaters," Muir said. "In a matter of fact, he's better."

Boutiette will begin his second Olympic journey next Sunday in the first long-track speedskating event, the men's 5,000 meters. He is the U.S. record holder in the race but has been strongest in the 1,500, which is scheduled in the M-Wave arena Feb. 12. He also qualified for the 1,000 Feb. 15 and the 10,000 Feb. 17.

The only U.S. skater to perform successfully this season is Chris Witty, who has a strong chance to win a medal in the women's 1,000. But Boutiette warns not to ignore the men, who have targeted the Olympics.

"You can't say yet," Boutiette said of medal predictions. "A lot of guys have a shot if they time it right. I think the Olympics are about timing. We've trained through World Cup races for this event."

Smessaert said: "He's a big-day racer. He never trembled in the face of a big challenge."

In other words, don't disregard Boutiette. Rodriguez, who also qualified for the Olympics, said all they do is train and bowl. Her average is 140; his is 200. "He actually looks good when he bowls; I don't," she said.

Wouldn't you know it, Boutiette just can't leave his roller-rink days behind. Those days have left lasting images. Smessaert remembers the first time he took Boutiette to dinner with Rollerblade team sponsors.

"We were in Athens, Ga., at a health-food restaurant," he recalled. "KC was new and wanted to make a good impression, but we could tell he was upset about something."

Smessaert asked Boutiette what was wrong. "He said, `I can't eat this stuff,' " Smessaert said. " `There's nothing on the menu I can eat. I've got to go find something else. I don't even know what this stuff is.' "

They got him to try the nachos.

"When he came abroad his diet was corn dogs and ice cream," Smessaert said. "He had grown up with rink food. I was amazed by the garbage he'd put in his body and perform at the level he did."

His eating habits were developed while learning to roller skate at the old Tacoma Rollerbowl. His mother, Mickey, a nurse's assistant at St. Claire Hospital in Tacoma, watched admiringly.

But the Olympics? Never crossed her mind.

As Boutiette improved, Mickey took a second job working in the rink's check room and snack bar to defray costs for equipment and trips.

Mickey is a single mother of two. She divorced Boutiette's father when KC and his brother, Joe, were young. Boutiette doesn't like to talk about it. His father died after being hit by a car seven years ago.

"Growing up was not that easy for him, and that makes him a strong person inside," Rodriguez said.

Boutiette was as blue collar and grunge as any Puget Sound youngster in the late '80s. He washed United Parcel Service trucks for $36 a night while attending Mount Tahoma High. He slept through classes during the day. After graduating, he worked as a rock crusher in Tukwila, enjoying the rhythms of the job, "like a nonstop project," he said.

But he excelled at in-line skating by then. One day he told his mother: "I'm quitting and going on the road with an in-line team." She didn't like it. Didn't think it made sense to give up a good-paying job. KC, which doesn't stand for anything, left anyway.

"He is very outspoken, opinionated," Mickey said. "He doesn't say much, but when he does, he has a reason to say it. Even with me, he'd get the last word."

The decision drastically changed his life. At 22, Boutiette, a lanky athlete of 5 feet 10, 155 pounds, moved to Huntington Beach, Calif., to train with some of the country's best bladers. They cruised the coastline at breakneck speeds. He improved quickly and became one of the fastest.

Boutiette won five national in-line championships. He became a star in his sport. But speedskating on ice? Boutiette always seemed to try the unexpected.

"He used to have hair that was yellow," his mother said. "The white is so much better. The earring in his tongue? I have no comment on that."

Well, perhaps one little aside. "I wished I had the nerve to have that done," she said. "I'd love to show up in Nagano and stick my tongue out at him."

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Northwest Olympians

The following roster reflects the Pacific Northwest athletes who have qualified to the 1998 U.S. Olympic Winter Games Team. Several more athletes are expected to qualify today.

Name Event Birthplace

Alan Alborn Ski jumping Brighton, Colo. Residence: Anchorage . Eric Berguost Freestyle skiing Missoula, Mont. Residence: Missoula, Mont. KC Boutiette Speed skating Tacoma . Residence: Tacoma . Rosey Fletcher Snowboarding Anchorage, Alaska . Residence: Girdwood, Alaska . Jay Hakkinen Biathlon Kasilof, Alaska . Residence: Kasilof, Alaska . Mike Jacoby Snowboarding Bellevue . Residence: Hood River, Ore. Nina Kemppel Cross-country skiing Boulder, Colo. Residence: Anchorage . Suzanne King Cross-country skiing New Haven, Conn. Residence: Minneapolis, Minn. Lisa Kosglow Snowboarding NA . Residence: Boise, Idaho . Laura McCabe Cross-country skiing Logan, Utah . Residence: Mazama . Laura Wilson Cross-country skiing Utica, N.Y. Residence: Ketchum, Idaho . Robert Rosser Biathlon Plattsburg, N.Y. Residence: Applegate, Ore. Ntala Skinner Biathlon Sun Valley, Idaho . Residence: Sun Valley, Idaho . Picabo Street Alpine skiing Triumph, Idaho . Residence: Portland . Michaelle Taggart Snowboarding Salem, Ore. Residence: Salem, Ore. Sondra Van Ert Snowboarding NA . Residence: Ketchum, Idaho . Justin Wadsworth Cross country skiing La Jolla, Calif. Residence: Bend, Ore.