Thanks K.C.
I am not a machine, I am a human being
-Anni Friesinger
Wouldn’t it be so easy if the athletes on TV responded as quickly and perfectly as computer video games, like machines, and the harder you urged them onward from the comfort of your TV view, the faster they go!
But that is how things go in the movies and in video games; we have become a culture of comfortable control in so many respects. Yet maybe this is why sports occupy more and more fascination within the modern psychological airspace; because Anni Friesinger is not a machine, and no matter how hard her fans hope, or how hard Anni herself tries, she does not always win. She was 4th, actually, in the 3k. She has been the best in the world for years, and she misses the podium in the Olympics.
We love sports because winning moves us, but as often, gut-wrenching loss is equally enthralling.
The pain of an athlete, who has trained their whole life for something, is like a car wreck we can’t look away from. Figure skaters crashing on the first jump of a program, skiers who miss a slalom gate, XC ski racers struggling up hills as the winners accelerate away from them, Michelle Kwan explaining at a news conference how the spirit is willing but her body has failed. There can only be one winner, many losers.
Hmmm, in fact, there are 2,600 athletes competing in Torino. Only 84 gold medal events (there are some team sports, like hockey, counted as “one” medal, but the ratio is still pretty bad)..
Since my own limited experience of just having competed at one Olympic trials, I find watching the Olympics sometimes a wrenching experience. I am not sure if I ever made it clear here how much disappointment I feel looking back on my 500m races during Olympic trials. It was me vs. myself, and I still feel like I failed. I have a picture in the clutter of my desk, its of my stumble in the final corner of my 2nd 500, both arms windmilling wildly. It hurts to look at. Sure, I am proud to have competed there, they were fast races compared to many others, but for me, they still feel like failures. I desperately wanted that top 10 finish, to earn the right to wear the USA on my skinsuit. In the overall rankings after the 2 500m races, I was 11th.
Maybe we do this for the failure, the pain, for the striving that makes us better in the long run. But I wanted to take a moment here to thank someone, someone who I think is in a lot of pain right now, and someone who has meant a lot to this sport:
Without K.C. Boutiette there would probably have been no Derek Parra, no Jen Rodrieguz, no Joey Cheek, no Chad Hedrick winning medals at the Olympics. Even though I don’t belong in that list of athletes, his life gave me the idea to ice a try as well. Without K.C. the arc of my life would have been different, and this blog would never have existed.
K.C. is special because he was the first top inline speedskater to try long-track ice, he grabbed a spot on the 1994 US Olympic team, and opened a lot of eyes. He competed in 94, 98, 2002, and this is his final games.
Maybe someone else would have been that first inliner to make the ice scene, maybe it was an inevitable progression, but K.C. was the definitive pioneer, the first, the one who turned possibility into reality.
But K.C. is not a machine, he has suffered with a back injury for years, and kept training hard for that elusive goal, that stamp of a medal, that validation of all that effort.
He has placed 5th twice in Olympic races, his final event in his 4th Olympics was a few days ago, his final shot (and an excellent chance) at an Olympic medal. But K.C’s legs locked up in the last laps of the team pursuit, and he finished 10 meters behind teammates Chad and Charles, and Italy beat the US team, knocking them out of contention for a medal.
I read the results online before NBC coverage started; I read that KC was in tears afterwards. I skipped watching the coverage; I did not want to see this. I have a hard enough time watching other athletes in other sports suffer. Not this, not this good guy who has always been so friendly & open hearted, I don’t want that memory. (they replayed his tears several times, so I saw it anyway, damm).
K.C. I think that the inliners who have won medals at the Olympics, all of them ought to shave a tiny bit from the backside of each one, melt the shards together, and give it to you.
Or maybe those of us who stepped onto the ice following your inspiration, maybe we can all take a slice of our joy, and en masse brew a tonic against the wrenching I imagine is in your gut at the end of your career. I wish we could all do that right now. A roomful of us, how many? several hundred at least, probably more, a standing ovation just for you that goes on and on.
I came across this line in a poem by an obscure beatnik writer:
Like everything else I have
Somebody showed it to me and I found it by myself
He was writing about a huge boulder on the seashore, that wobbles every time a wave hits it, but I thought of speedskating, K.C. and his pain…. I hope he is at peace.
There is a much worse pain in this world, after all, it’s just skating, it’s just joy, just failure, just pain, just the Olympics…
Filed under: on the road
wow, now i will cry too after reading this lol, i think anyone would wish that someone wrote about them like that. perhaps is it better than an olympic medal? giving yourself away that much?
This is a great post…
Thank you for writing it.
It’s the first I’ve seen mentioning K.C. and what he is going through.
Right now all the talk is about Shani letting Chad and the team down by not being in the pursuit.
How, if Shani would have raced, Team USA would have won Gold.
No one knows that for sure, anything could have happened, just like it happened to K.C.
K.C. is a great skater! It was just a bad break….
There could have been a slip by anyone, someone elses legs could have cramped up….K.C. gave it all he had and that’s what the Olympics is all about, or should be.
Thanks for bringing the human part of the Olympics back into focus and for giving honor where honor is due.
“He gave his life that others might live.”
I don’t mean to steal a paraphrase from the Bible, but even the use of it is not meant to immortalize.
KC, as I understand, is the pioneer who paved the way for others to crossover into unmarked territory, “Inline to Ice.” He sacrificed his career in Inline for the “quest for gold.”
It is worth mentioning that not only has he been at the four most recent Winter Games to compete, but also has had the opportunity to see direct results of his recruitment of others from the world of Inline–winning medals.
There’s no way I think I could ever relate to KC’s emotional burden; everytime I think of Allen Schauffler reporting on his interview and seeing KC on the screen, I get choked up–I even welled-up in tears thinking about it on the drive home from work this morning.
I don’t know how many crossover speedskaters who have won medals at the Winter Games give tribute to KC for introducing them to the sport of speedskating on ice, but I’d like to consider for a moment, if not for a very long time, that each medal won/earned by a US Speedskater since ‘94, was earned in honor of KC and what he has done for the sport.
If it was not for KC, the US Team would not be near as deep as it currently is. Since US Speedskating’s mission is to collect as many gold medals as possible in the Winter Games, I do believe KC should be held to the highest esteem for what he has done, is doing, and will do for US Speedskating and speedskating as a sport.
KC, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be on the ice either. I could’ve settled for becoming a great Inline skater, but instead, have become quite a speedskater.
KC, you’ve come a long way, but what you’ve done is far better than earning a gold medal–you’ve won the hearts of a million!
Hi Andrew - Thanks for the fitting perspective on KC’s outstanding career and contribution to US Speed Skating. Is he in the Hall of Fame? If not, someone should nominate him - hint, hint.
when i first made the transition from quads to inline, i remember K.C.s’ was the only ‘voice’ i could find when researching sports articles on inline, he did an instructive article about inline racing technique, which made it crystal clear as to ‘how it’s done’…i’ll never forget it! thanks, K.C., for that and many other inspirations!Greg
My daughter’s gym teacher tells the kids that they should respect and thank their competitors, because those competitors help them to reach the best they’re capable of.
What i recoil from in competition is that it’s only possible to triumph through others’ defeat. Even if skill and effort prevail, and there’s no luck or fluke upsetting the balance, you can’t win except by someone else’s losing. I’m much more willing to pay for joy with my own pain than with others’, let alone if those others are friends and colleagues, known-decent people, known to be working as hard as i am, to care as much as i do.
However, you all choose that world, and know you’ll be on the losing end for sure at time. The people i really resent are the ones watching on TV, emotional vampires, getting nasty thrills from the sorrow fo a K.C. or a Michelle. I know a lot of people watch as much, or more, to gawk at the agony of defeat as to share the thrill of victory and it makes me ill.
Andrew, this is a moving post, and it makes me wish I knew K.C. better personally so I could say something really useful. I know he is a wonderful person. I suppose what I would say is…
I’m glad Andrew used the real words for the way races feel sometimes, “suffer”, “failures”, “pain”…I always think it doesn’t do justice to the way we feel after a miserable race (or weekend) when people say things like “don’t use the word ‘fail’, nooo you didn’t lose, you did fine”, etc.
But, that said, I see K.C. as a successful and incredible athlete. I admire his abilities. I was telling Andrew a few minutes ago (because he’s right here in Milwaukee) that I would be scared to be part of a team pursuit (if I were that fast, etc.) because I get dropped doing easy training laps sometimes! It takes a lot of guts to make a decision and take a risk…to race, not race, plod through a bunch of bad races, or focus on your next race.
K.C. was part of an amazingly fast team pursuit team, and I can’t think of many things greater than putting everything you have into a race and finishing with legs that won’t work. We’re not supposed to cross the finish line smiling and comfortable. If we did, it wouldn’t be a very exciting competition. (And I really seriously mean that, because I have some races where I can’t go hard enough because of still-recovering iron levels or whatever, and it is absolutely not satisfying. Not that it’s the same as the Olympics, but ya know….)
We also can’t all finish our athletic careers with gold medals and our arms in the air. Things just are not that neat and organized. Really, what would be the point of all this training and racing if everybody had an ideal race every time? It is inspiring to me to see someone work hard, influence other athletes (or whoever), and be great, so yes, thanks K.C.