Skating Through Life : Distance Sport Makes Seutter an Unemployed High Roller

“My mother would still like me to be a young Jewish doctor,” says Jonathan Seutter, ladling warm oatmeal from a pot. Seutter, 31, is sitting on the floor of his ramshackle Topanga home--a converted truck half-buried in the woods, with two add-on rooms not much bigger than closets. The place is so remote that Seutter meets visitors a quarter-mile down the hill on Topanga Canyon Boulevard and guides them the rest of the way.

Rejecting yuppie values, Seutter has created a hippie-like existence for himself in order to pursue roller speed skating, a fledgling Olympic sport also known as long-distance or ultra-marathon roller-skating. But strict rules all but preclude sponsorship by a corporation or acceptance of prize money--in other words, there’s no money in the sport.

“Long-distance skating is my great love,” he says, a voice from another era. “And going against the clock is my favorite.”

At an age when a lot of his high school friends are driving their second BMW, Seutter can barely afford to get around on polyurethane wheels. To be a full-time skater, Seutter could not have a full-time job. When he needs fast cash, he dons a top hat and works as a chimney sweep for $200 a scrub, not exactly brain surgery, but it allows him to be his own boss and skate some 200 miles a week. He trains 30 hours a week, 11 months a year, from the hills of Topanga to the smooth ribbon of asphalt on the beach bike path between Santa Monica and Torrance.

The rules in chimney sweeping: “Don’t get the inside of the house dirty, don’t breathe the creosote and don’t fall off the roof,” Seutter says. Putting down the wooden ladle, he goes into the tiny kitchen entrance and fixes a vitamin concoction. The sun is beating on the roof and warming the house, which doesn’t have an air conditioner. He’s wearing black Speedos and a T-shirt. His feet are bare--shoes are left outside, a house rule.

When roller-skating took over his life in the early ‘80s, “my family thought I was crazy,” he says. But when they saw how the life style set him free and lifted his spirits, “They started to accept me.” Their disapproval almost stopped entirely, he says, when he became the first American to set a world record in roller speed skating.

“My mother was there and she couldn’t have been happier,” Seutter says, “but secretly, she was wishing I’d accumulate a bank account.”

Last January in Long Beach, Seutter, accompanied by a support crew of three and eight officials from various skating associations, made his successful assault on the world record for distance covered in 12 hours. Scorching a 1.7-mile course at El Dorado Park, Seutter raced 145.25 miles, nearly 1 1/2 miles more than the mark set by an Italian, Ivano Marangoli, in 1982.

“The Italians consider themselves the big potatoes of speed skating,” Seutter says, “so I expect them to regain the record before the winter is over. And I, in turn, expect to get it back next year.”

Snidely called “sleep-depravation specialists” by their detractors, ultra-marathoners--including swimmers, cyclists and runners--have to keep increasing their goals to muster the necessary fortitude to withstand the pain during an event. They also need plenty of rest afterward. The debilitating competition, the costs of travel and the infrequency of major events--even marathons are too short for Seutter--force him to limit his activity. In a year, he might take part in six or eight races (he usually finishes in the top five) and make three attempts to break records.

Last May, Seutter set an L. A.-to-San Diego record of 11 hours, 23 minutes. This October, “When the weather cools down and I won’t become bleached bones in the desert,” he will attempt to establish a trans-California record from Huntington Beach to the Colorado River.

“It’s 235 miles, with an elevation gain of 8,000 feet, and I hope to skate it in 24 hours,” says Seutter, whose average cruising speed on flat surfaces is 16 to 17 m.p.h.

For the trans-California effort, Seutter will be sure to get his itinerary straight with the California Highway Patrol. Skating on public roads--usually the shoulder--almost always gets Seutter in trouble with the law, “but nothing usually happens after I prove to them I’m no diddlybocker, “ he says, using an invented word. He did have a notable run-in with the CHP, however.

Last year, Seutter set his sights on the record for the distance between San Francisco and Los Angeles, a 407-mile trip down Interstate 5. Seven years earlier, the record of 5 1/2 days was set by a 14-man relay team. Seutter hoped to do it in three days, by himself.

In a final training run three weeks before the attempt, Seutter skated the last 95 miles to L. A., which meant he had to go up and over the Grapevine. He had no difficulty with either the distance or the law. Before he left for San Francisco, he called Caltrans and was reassured, he says, that permits were not needed to skate on Interstate 5.

So he set off from City Hall in San Francisco, followed in a VW Westphalia by his three-person support team and a camera crew from a television network in Tokyo. Music ranging from Dixieland to classical blared from the van. In 27 hours, Seutter was in Coachella and 203 miles into his trip when the convoy was stopped by a CHP officer, who didn’t care if Seutter was a diddlybocker or not.

“I was told I did need a permit,” he says. “And the cop said that if I continued skating, I’d be put in jail.” So the attempt was abandoned. “I threw my skates in the bushes and cried,” Seutter says. “I was extremely upset, but I’m going to try again next year--with the proper permits.”

It is difficult to believe that Seutter, a lean 6 feet, 3 inches and 165 pounds, was neither competitive nor athletic before getting into roller-skating. At Hamilton High on the West Side, “I took ROTC to get out of phys-ed,” he says. As an MP in the Army, “I ran track only to get on special duty.” After his discharge from the Army in 1976, he attended Santa Monica College for a couple of years, studying police science, but became a carpenter. In 1978, one of his jobs took him to Venice, installing shelves at a new shop called Roller Revolution.

“It was during the roller-skating craze,” he says. The owner of the store asked Seutter to stay and work for him. Seutter thought it over. “There are a lot of pretty girls in the summer,” he told himself. That was all the convincing he needed. Because he wore roller-skates in the shop, it was only natural to try out the bike path. Soon he was entering races “on a whim” and gaining awareness of his affection, and aptitude, for long distances.

With his credentials, Seutter’s life would be a lot better if the U. S. Amateur Confederation of Roller-Skating--the sport’s national governing body--loosened its rules on sponsorship. Amateurs in other sports, such as track and field, can compete for prize money, get guarantees from promoters and enjoy liberal rules on sponsorship. But the USACRS limits sponsorship to the amount an athlete spends on expenses every year and forbids the acceptance of prize money.

The other amateur associations “just have a different set of rules than we do,” says a spokesman for the Nebraska-based USACRS, which will be bringing roller hockey to the Olympics as a demonstration sport in 1992--speed skating is a possibility in 1996.

Although he wouldn’t try out for the Olympics because the distances aren’t long enough for him, Seutter has been contemplating a wild idea to satisfy his thirst for challenges: skating across America. “Trans-continental,” he says reverently. “ I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.” But the costs go beyond physical. “It would cost from $20 to $30,000,” he says, mustache curling with his sigh.

“But,” he says, pumping himself up, “the record is 47 days. I think I could get it down to 30 days. Then I could retire a happy man.”