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NAGANO, Japan -- On a day when the Americans made progress in long-distance speedskating, they fell further behind the rest of the world.
KC Boutiette of Tacoma, Wash., set an American record Sunday in the 5,000 meters, the first race of the Olympics at M-Wave. The time of 6 minutes, 39.67 seconds broke his own mark of 6:40.95 set two months ago.
But Boutiette finished more than 11 seconds off the world-record pace of Dutch star Gianni Romme, who captured the gold medal with a stunning time of 6:22.20 -- more than eight seconds ahead of the record he held at the start of the race.
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| KC Boutiette set an American record in the men's 5,000 meters and finished 14th. |
He whipped off his hood and thrust his arms into the air as he passed the singing, swaying Dutch fans clad in orange.
Silver medalist Rintje Ritsma of Holland and bronze medalist Bart Veldkamp of Belgium also eclipsed the previous world record by more than two seconds.
"At least I can say I had a world record for a little while," Veldkamp said. "It was a great performance. Six seconds faster was unbelieveable."
Boutiette wound up in 14th place and the other American in the race, Dave Tamburrino of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., was 16th in 6:41.19.
Boutiette, a former in-line champion known for his dyed blonde hair, pierced tongue and the Olympic rings tattoo on his left ankle, was a surprise member of the U.S. team in 1994, when he qualified just three months after taking up ice skating.
The 27-year-old stuck with his new sport over the past four years and came to Nagano as America's best male distance skater, though his best medal chance will likely come in the 1,500.
Tamburrino, 25, followed the more traditional speedskating route, taking up the sport at age 7 and working his way through the ranks to earn a spot on the 1994 Olympic team. He finished 22nd in the 1,500 at Lillehammer.
The American men have not won a 5,000 medal since Eric Heiden's gold at the 1980 Lake Placid Games, when he became the only speedskater to sweep all five races in the Olympics.
The Americans had only two competitors in this year's 5,000, though they brought three skaters to Nagano. The International Skating Union allowed a skater from Kazakhstan to enter the event instead of Derek Parra, despite U.S. claims that the Asian country had not filled out its entry form correctly.
Sergey Kaznacheyev, racing instead of Parra, finished 26th in the 32-man field.
Veldkamp, who left the Netherlands because of its stringent training schedule, took more than two seconds off the world record with his time of 6:28.31.
That stood about as long as it took the Zamboni to smooth the ice for the final four pairings. Ritsma, the all-around world champion who has won just about everything but an Olympic gold, was on pace to break the mark from the opening lap. Gasping and straining down the frontstretch, he clipped a mere seven-hundredths of a second off Veldkamp's time.
Romme made it look even easier.
A notoriously fast starter known to fade over the final laps, Romme immediately sent the Dutch fans into a frenzy. He was already three seconds ahead of Ritsma's pace five laps into the race, and almost six seconds in front when the bell sounded for the final lap.
So dominant was Romme that he let up slightly at the end, rising from his crouch as he crossed the line and smiled as the scoreboard showed his record time.
He won his heat by nearly half of a lap over Norway's Kjell Storelid, the silver medalist in the 5,000 in 1994.
It was a sensational start to what the Dutch hope will be redemption from a lackluster performance at the 1994 games in Lillehammer, when they failed to win a gold medal in speedskating for only the second time since 1964.
Another Dutchman, Bob DeJong, finished fourth, and he, Ritsma and Romme walked to the edge of the oval after the race to salute their fans.
The medal winners wore a new skating suit, which featured two pieces of wavy fabric down the front of each leg to help with the air flow. Dutch researchers said the stripes improve areodynamics by reducing drag.
Then there's the clap skates. They have a hinge and spring near the toe that allows the blade to stay on the ice a fraction of a second longer before it claps back into place.
United State coach Geerd Kemkers said he heard the Dutch skaters say that they thought the strips could help them gain half a second a lap.
"That means they're as good as the slap skates," said Kemkers.
How big a difference do they made? Romme's time was more than 12 seconds better than the world record set by Johann Olav Koss of Norway in Lillehammer.
Koss and Dan Jansen, who are both working as television commentators at the Nagano games, said they expected as many as six world records to fall over the next two weeks because of the new clap skates.