An Athlete With All the Tools

Would you buy a power saw from this man?

Wearing a crisp, orange Home Depot apron with black lettering that reads, “Hi, I’m Rusty, I Help in All Departments,” Rusty Smith is in earnest conversation with a customer at the Huntington Beach home improvement haven. Blond-highlighted head nodding, Smith discusses the virtues of various power tools before he sends the satisfied do-it-yourselfer back out into the world.

Smith, of Sunset Beach, is actually making a cameo appearance at the store where he worked for three months last summer. When he got back, his locker had been given away and his apron stuffed into someone else’s cubbyhole because he had been gone so long, training to qualify for the U.S. Olympic short-track speedskating team at the Salt Lake City Winter Games.

Smith gets a new apron before he heads out to the sales floor for a TV interview, zigzagging through aisles of trash bins, wrenches and screen doors. Although thrumming with restlessness, he pauses every few feet to greet co-workers. A 1997 graduate of Huntington Beach’s Ocean View High, no more than an extension cord’s length away, Smith is on home turf.

“Anything new I don’t know about?” he asks a cashier, who fills him in on who’s dating whom and who got engaged since his last visit.

“Rusty’s a great kid. He makes everyone enthusiastic about the Olympics,” co-worker Shannon Butler says. “We’re all really excited. He’s got an incredible personality. Everybody is so glad to see him when he comes in.”

Jeff Crowe, a fellow sales associate, praises Smith’s way with customers.

“He could sell you the right drill,” Crowe says.

Smith gives Crowe an oversized business card, imprinted on the back with the skater’s age, job title and competitive record. Crowe asks Smith to sign the front, where he’s pictured in his apron.

“I got his autograph in case he wins,” Crowe says. “Otherwise, it’ll sit in a drawer.”

With any luck, Smith will bring home some gold, silver or bronze hardware.

He has the talent. At the 1998 Nagano Games, he finished 13th in the 1,000 meters and was part of the sixth-place 5,000-meter relay team that set a U.S. record in 7 minutes 2.014 seconds. He was eighth overall in the 2001 World Short Track Championships, sharing gold in the 5,000-meter relay besides finishing fourth in the 1,000 and fifth in the 3,000.

At the Olympic trials in December, Smith earned berths in the 500, 1,000 and 1,500 and the 5,000-meter relay, as did Apolo Anton Ohno. According to the International Skating Union, Smith has the seventh-best time ever in the 500 (41.691 seconds), 20th-best in the 1,000 (1:27.825) and third-best in the 1,500 (2:13.893). He recorded all three at the trials on the fast Olympic Oval.

His coach, Dutch-born Wilma Boomstra, says Smith, 22, routinely clocks world-record times in training.

“If he races the way he skates in practices, then he’s top three in the world right now,” she says.

But that doesn’t always happen. In a World Cup race at Calgary this season, he slipped while on a world-record pace in the 500. He also crashed out of the 1,500.

“It’s in the head,” Boomstra says. “He skates the fastest lap times in the world, but racing is a totally different thing than the practices. He never falls in practices. He falls in races. That’s definitely mental. It can’t be anything else.”

Robert Ahlke agrees. He’s co-president of the Southern California Speedskating Assn., which has helped further Smith’s career, and he bought Smith’s first pair of speedskates.

“At the last Olympics, in practices he was skating the fastest times in the world,” says Ahlke, a contractor who competes in over-40 races. “Other coaches from around the world would come with stopwatches and say, ‘Who is he?’ But things just didn’t go his way again. He fell, he got [disqualified]. It was a bad deal. This time he’s matured a lot. He’s not going to get pushed around like last time.”

Nor will he be pushed around off the ice. Responding to an accusation by former teammate Tommy O’Hare more than a week after the trials that Smith and Ohno had fixed a race to freeze out O’Hare and help Shani Davis qualify, Smith sued O’Hare for defamation. Arbitrator James Holbrook found no evidence of a fix and said skaters who had submitted affidavits saying they’d heard Smith and Ohno conspire “were admittedly inaccurate.” Holbrook exonerated Smith, Ohno and Davis; O’Hare withdrew his complaint, and Smith dropped his suit.

The distraction was another bump in a road pocked with potholes.

The son of divorced parents, Smith comes from a working-class family. His father, Gail, manages an apartment building in Venice Beach and his mother, Paula, lives in Winnipeg, Canada. Since he has no place of his own, when he’s in town he stays in a basement apartment at the Newport Beach home owned by Ahlke and Ahlke’s wife Lisa. They’re custodians of the medals and ribbons he jams in a white canvas bag, which he dumps onto a table at a visitor’s request.

“You’re proud of it for the first week, then it’s on to the next competition,” he says of his prizes. “If you don’t, you’re going to sit back and look at everything you’ve done, not what you’re going to do.”

Ahlke believes Smith needs only a break at Salt Lake City to add to that pile.

“Short-track speedskating is highly competitive,” Ahlke says. “Just because you’re the fastest skater doesn’t mean you’re going to win. You could get boxed out.”

Smith sounds ready to combat anything.

“I don’t expect one medal. I expect multiple medals. Without a doubt,” he says.

“Our relay team has an extremely good chance to win silver or gold and then, individually, I’d like one, but I can see two. The 500 and 1,000 are my best. The 1,500 is my worst distance and I’m ranked top six in the world. I shouldn’t say it’s bad. It’s just harder for me to do.”

The experience of having competed at the Nagano Games, he hopes, will help him clear any psychological hurdles at Salt Lake City.

“The first one was an incredible thrill,” he says. “With the second one, now I have another goal that I have to accomplish.”

Smith grew up in north Long Beach, near the Paramount skating rink. His mother took him to a public skating session one day when he was a preteen, and he proved a natural.

Seeing him fly around the ice, a speedskater named Bob Nelson asked his mother how long he had been skating, and was astonished to hear it was his first day. Nelson asked if he wanted to try speedskating, which he did two days later.

“I enjoyed myself, and that’s the reason I went back, but it wasn’t an instant success,” he says. “It was fun, so I did it. It’s exciting. There’s more to it than, say, skiing. There’s strategy involved. People don’t see it right away.

“I was fairly lucky. I knew what to do. I’ve always known how to do it. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy it as much as I do.”

At 15, he was accepted into the U.S. Olympic Committee’s resident training program and moved to Lake Placid, N.Y. A year later, he made the junior national team and in 1996 advanced to the senior national team.

He went back and forth between Southern California and upstate New York for three years. He then was invited to live at the USOC training center in Colorado Springs, Colo., where he works for Home Depot when his training schedule permits.

For putting in 20 hours a week, Smith gets full benefits, medical and dental coverage and stock options. He also makes promotional appearances, and rode on Home Depot’s float in the Rose Parade. The money comes in handy: His boots cost $1,600 and blades cost $250 a pair--and he goes through five pairs a year. The USOC and U.S. Speedskating, the sport’s national governing body, also give him stipends.

He tries to return to Southern California once a month to work with Boomstra and to see his older brother, JD. He also tries to catch up with friends, often while surfing. He calls the water off Huntington Beach “my new native habitat” and loves the sport, though he has difficulty finding a wetsuit because he has the thick thighs of skaters and cyclists. He’s 5 feet 8 and 160 pounds, much of that muscular legs.

“I had to get a special size wetsuit,” he says. “The stomach is so baggy, half the ocean is in my wetsuit.... I know what to do in a minimal way. Surfing is just a hobby. It’s relaxing and enjoyable. I wouldn’t mind being better at it.”

Being the best at Salt Lake City is what matters to him now.

His father and mother and their significant others are going, and his brother is taking a group of friends in an RV. The Ahlkes will be there too.

“I hope I don’t embarrass them,” Smith says.

Not likely.

“He definitely has medal potential,” Boomstra says. “It’s so elusive. He tenses up a little too much. It’s getting a lot better. He’s racing a lot better than he was. Before, he was too tight. He still has a little way to go, but I think he can do it.”

To Smith, the only problem is dividing his medals among his family and the Ahlkes.

“That’s why I have to get more than one,” he says. “I’ve seen it in my mind. I see it all the time when I’m on the ice. I’ve seen how, if I’m in fourth place, how I’ll move to second. I know exactly in my mind what I have to do.

“Losing is not an option.”