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(Feb 6, 1998 - 05:37 EST) -- The angle on KC Boutiette that would be most obvious also might be most superficial.
And conclusions that come quickly might be misleading.
An observer, in such a case, might want to take Boutiette's appearance as a starting point and arrive at some assumptions about its relevance to his success as a competitive speedskater.
One could joke that he's something of a hybrid between Eric Heiden and Lady Clairol.
Or that he grew up in a county named "Pierce" and that he must have mistaken it as a verb, not a noun.
And with those no-dot initials, the man is such a rebel that he won't even obey the Rules of Punctuation.
The temptation, clearly, is to label him a Generation-X, iconoclastic spawn of MTV, and not the typical born-and-bred Olympian sent off to represent the U.S. of A.
But Boutiette is an entirely different subject if viewed from the inside-out, rather than the outside-in.
Because down in there resides the real things that have caused a tiny kid from Tacoma, Wash. to become one of America's best hopes for an Olympic medal in four speedskating events at the Nagano Olympics.
Sure, the 27-year-old Boutiette (pronounced booty-A) will gladly kick down the walls of any box you tried to put him in. And if he sees a stereotype, he'll happily stomp it flat.
But the need to be outrageous didn't fuel this trip to Japan, the need to be the best did.
"I think we've got a real good chance in Japan," said Boutiette, who will race in the 1,000, 1,500, 5,000 and 10,000 meters. "We're really looking forward to this competition."
Actually, it's the culmination of a long and unusal trip for Boutiette.
"Here's a kid who grew up in Tacoma, and I don't think there was much money," said Jerry Suhrstedt, a former speedskating coach and long-time friend. "He had to fight for whatever he got.
"You see some athletes whose parents have all the money and buy them all the trainers and everything, but KC didn't have any of this given to him, he was about 20 percent opportunity and 80 percent tenacity."
And for Boutiette, it seems not quite enough to just prove people wrong.
"His success? (He got it) by just being KC," said Mo Sanders, a friend from junior-high days. "When people tell him he can't do something, he doesn't just want to do whatever it takes to do it, he wants to do it so well that he almost makes you pay for doubting in the first place."
Doubts? Oh yes, plenty of them. Even those who knew Boutiette couldn't have predicted he could climb off the back of a rock-crusher he was operating for a Federal Way construction company and become one of the top in-line skaters in the country.
Or that he could then shuck those wheels for blades and in a matter of less than three months be on his way to the Lillehammer Olympics in 1994.
As shocking as the success in those circumstances has been, maybe even more impressive was the audacity it took to even attempt such leaps of faith.
"KC has always been one to sacrifice whatever he's got if he believes in something," Sanders said. "Even when he was a little kid, he'd tell you what he felt, do what he thought was right and if you didn't like it, too bad, at least you knew how he felt."
It's one of the things Mickey Boutiette, his mother, most admires about KC.
"Ever since he was little, he would stand up for what is right and I admire him for that," Mickey Boutiette said. "I think a lot of us let people run over us, but he stands up if something bugs him and says it to your face. I look at him and wish I had some of that."
Not that Mickey Boutiette needs much more fortitude. She and her husband divorced when KC and his brother Joe were young and "I've just kind of devoted myself to my boys ever since."
How? For the past 25 years, she's been a nurses' assistant in the operating room at St. Clare's Hospital. On the weekends, she pulls another couple of shifts washing dishes at a local restaurant.
And with all her free time, she goes down to the pound and rescues death-row dogs and cats, takes them in and tries to find permanent homes for them.
So those seeking the well-spring of KC Boutiette's determination and positive nature, the font is probably washing dishes or feeding strays right now.
"KC used to be very determined and very focused if it was something he really wanted to do," Mickey Boutiette said. "If he didn't know something, he'd learn it."
He tried football with the East Side Boys Club, but he was so small, even the tiniest pants were too big and had to use one hand to hold up his drawers as he played.
He wrestled at Mt. Tahoma High, but school work was not one of the areas that fascinated him, and he was ultimately ineligible.
But at the local roller rinks, his size was not that much a disadvantage.
"He was very small when he started skating and he would always start at the end of the pack and have to fight his way through," Mickey Boutiette said. "The big guys would beat on him, but I think that's how he learned to be tough the way he is."
But roller skating held no long-range prospects, and college had no appeal, so he joined the work force after high school.
"I liked it," Boutiette said of the work on the rock crusher. "I was out there doing my own thing. I had a boss, but I knew the job I had to do and I could do it. That made it fun for me, like a non-stop project I could work on."
At the time, in-line skating grew into his competitive outlet. And he became so good at it, it lured him off the rock crusher.
"That was about the only time I got upset with him," Mickey Boutiette said. "He had a good construction job and he came home and said I'm going to in-line skate. I got upset that he shouldn't give up steady work, but he said 'Mom, I just really need to compete'."
Sponsorship and prize money made in-line skating a decent income for him in the early '90s.
In late 1993, though, Boutiette shifted competitive mediums -- jarred from his path by an unusual impetus.
"He was going out with a girl and she dumped him for one of his buddies," Suhrstedt recalled. "He was kind of distraught and down and out about that. I told him he should just get up and do something crazy, maybe go and give long-track (speedskating on ice) a try."
Boutiette, in Fort Collins, Colo., at the time, hopped on a bus to Milwaukee, the home of the Pettit National Ice Center.
On that 30-hour bus ride, Boutiette had nothing to do but think.
"I had no real plans, I just went there and one thing led to another," he said of $50 bus trek to Wisconsin. "I was sitting on that bus and I decided that ice skating couldn't be that much different than in-line skating. But once I got there, I realized it was."
Suhrstedt said he wanted to be positive about the effort for his friend, and wish him the best of luck, "but I couldn't believe anything could ever come of it."
His feelings were buttressed the next day. "KC called me and said, well, I skated, and I really suck," Suhrstedt said. "But I'm gonna keep trying for a while."
Mickey Boutiette, too, took a well-that's-nice-son attitude, without much in the way of expectations.
"I was just happy he had something that interested him, but I thought it was just something to keep him busy," she said. "Then he calls back and said his times were pretty good and they wanted him to try for the Olympic team. I heard 'Olympic team' and I thought, Lord, I guess he's serious about this."
He won the 5,000-meter competition and was on his way to Lillehammer.
Probably fatigued from preparing for the Trials, Boutiette got ill before the Olympics and was far from sharp in Norway. And he was also struck by not a small bit of vertigo from his rapid rise.
"I was so nervous, I'm lacing up my skates and looking at the crowd, skating around the ice with a big smile on my face," he said. "I was so scared and nervous, I had only been skating a couple of months. I was so unsure of myself, I only did about half the warmup. I was just skating around smiling and waving at people."
Meanwhile, the staff at St. Clare's was holding bake sales and fund raisers, and with the $7,000 collected, sent Mickey Boutiette to Norway to see her son compete.
While Dan Jansen and Johann Olav Koss were capturing medals and headlines, Boutiette was never a factor.
The following winter, he briefly considered trading the skates back for his construction boots.
"I quit for a week," he said. "After the Olympics, expectations were so high. What nobody saw was that I had focused so hard on making the team, that I peaked for that, then got really sick and skated poorly.
"I wanted to quit altogether, get out of the limelight and go back to construction," he said. "I was maybe a little lonely, a little frustrated with how I was skating; I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was confused."
After a week of self-exile in Tacoma, his competitiveness resurfaced and took control.
Since then, he's set two world records and won three United States all-around championships.
He will compete in what seems to be a grueling combination of the 1,000, 1,500, 5,000 and 10,000 meters.
"From an athletic standpoint, he's an amazing human being," Suhrstedt said. "The Olympic team doctor told him that KC has the largest (cardiovascular) capacity ever tested for a speedskater. He's just this little skinny guy, but he can do a 200-mile race, finish it, and be ready to do it again."
The attention that he once sought, and then overwhelmed him, ultimately, has not changed him.
"He's the same crazy kid," Mickey Boutiette said. "I love being around him, people love being around him because he's so upbeat and positive. Whenever I'm down or frustrated, he just lights me right up."
So, this examination of Boutiette has worked its way to the surface, from the heart, the determination, the desire, the lungs.
Now, finally, to the external Boutiette.
The hair is a brassy-blond, there's an Olympic-rings tattoo someplace, and the ears are perforated at regular intervals.
And through his tongue, a silver-ball stud protrudes.
"I think it's a little gross, but that's KC," Mickey Boutiette said. "The first time I saw it, I thought he was sucking on a Lifesaver or something."
An idea then struck her. This maternal nurses' assistant/dishwasher/pet rescuer would show how much she loved her son. As if the 27 years of dedication were not enough.
"You know what I'd like to do?" she asked. "I don't think I have enough guts to go through with it, but I would like to show up in Nagano, and when I see him, I'd have one of those things in my tongue, too.
"I don't think I could go through with it, but I think that would be just the sort of thing that would really tickle KC."