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Off-ice distractions help Smith focus on skating by Scott M. Reid originally published in The East Valley Tribune It was a rookie mistake. Rusty Smith, then just 18, was so determined to stay focused at his first Olympic Games four years ago in Nagano that he locked himself in his Olympic Village dorm room. "He just skated and stayed in his room," said Wilma Boomstra, Smith's coach. "It was a bad move. Rusty needs distractions." Distractions are about all Smith, one of the world's top short-track speed skaters, has had in the weeks leading up the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. For most of January, the Sunset Beach native found himself at the center of a race-fixing controversy that threatened to bounce him off the U.S. team and overshadowed much of the build-up to Games already riddled with scandal. Smith was eventually cleared of wrong doing only to have his dorm room at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs flooded just days before he was supposed to leave for Salt Lake City. "This whole deal has taken a lot of him," Boomstra said after a recent training session. The frustration in her noticeable Dutch accent is brief and without resignation. If there is a theme to the journey that has led Smith, 22, from a Long Beach, Calif., ice rink to lonely years in Lake Placid, New York to Nagano to Colorado Springs and now to Salt Lake City and a shot at four Olympic medals, it is resiliency. He has overcome a broken leg and broken shoulder. Once he was back on the ice just three weeks after breaking an ankle. Sour grapes and a soggy CD collection aren't going to derail him now. "He's been an underdog ever since he started skating," said Lisa Ahlke, a Newport Beach, Calif., woman who with her husband, Robert, have become a second family for Smith. "Ever since he was just a little kid standing at that starting line trying to skate against guys much bigger than him, he's had this 'I'll show them kind of thing.'" Smith is once again an underdog in Salt Lake City, although by no means a long shot. Skating in the shadow of friend and former room-mate Apolo Ohno, the favorite to sweep the short-track races, Smith has emerged as a skater capable of winning a medal in all three individual races - 500, 1000 and 1500 meters - as well as the 5000-meter relay. "My goal is not to come home with a medal," Smith said. "My goal is to come home with multiple medals." "I think he could be at the top in the world," Boomstra said. "And I'm not talking top 10. I'm talking top one, two, three. "I can see him winning a medal in each distance. He has what it takes to be in the top five in the world now and in short track you never know what can happen." From the start Smith's career has been unlikely. He had taken to roller hockey as a 12-year-old when his mother suggested he try ice skating. Not long after he laced up his first pair of ice skates at a Long Beach rink, Smith caught the attention of Bob Nelson, a former speed skater. "How long have you been skating?" Nelson asked. "About a half-hour," Smith replied. Nelson suggested Smith try speed skating. Two days later Smith was on the ice again. Three years later, two days past his 15th birthday, he was on his way to upstate New York and a spot in the Olympic development program. "Growing up I wore shorts every day until I was in sixth grade," Smith said. "Now I'm in a place where it's seven degrees below zero. It was a little bit of a shock. It was hard the first few months. I was on the phone with my mom all the time." The weather wasn't the only obstacle. Doctors at first thought Smith broke his neck in a bike crash during his second year in Lake Placid. Instead he walked away with nothing more than a broken finger. But the wreck left him shaken. He thought about quitting the program and returning to Southern California. Eventually he decided to dig in and stay. He thrived on the hard training. "Not training as hard as I could was not an option," Smith said. The hard work paid off in a silver medal the 1997 Junior World championships. "That was the first time I really said to myself 'I can actually do this stuff,'" he recalled. A year later he was at the Olympics. Disappointed at the time by 22nd place finishes in the 500, 13th in the 1000 and a sixth with the relay, Smith is now able to see Nagano for what it was: a learning experience. "I wasn't where I needed to be," Smith said. "My body just wasn't' ready yet." Smith continued to progress following a move to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs after Nagano. He picked up a five bronze medals on the 2000-01 World Cup circuit then helped the U.S. win the relay gold medal at the 2001 World championships. Last fall Smith was on world record place coming off the final turn of a World Cup 500 race only to fall. Then in January he ran into another potential obstacle. Tommy O'Hare alleged that Smith and Ono conspired to fix a 1000 race at December's U.S. Olympic Trials to help friend Shani Davis make the team and keep O'Hare off. O'Hare's attorneys obtained sworn affidavits from three skaters that they overheard Smith and Ono's plans and race referee Jim Chapin, who said he was irregularities in the race. Ono and Smith both denied any wrong doing and Smith filed a defamation suit against O'Hare. On January 24 an arbitration board rules there was no evidence to support O'Hare's charges. Smith dropped his lawsuit but the controversy had clearly taken its toll. "It was a big distraction," Ahlke said. "He was sitting in a courtroom 12 hours a day instead of training." "As soon as you are accused of something you have a long way to go to get yourself out of that," Smith said. "Unfortunately that's just the way the world works. Everyone wants to hear about bad news and nobody wants to hear about good news." Those closest to Smith are confident he will be able to put the controversy and its distraction behind him by the time he lines up for his first race at Salt Lake Olympic Ice Center, the 1,000 prelims next Wednesday. He has continued to pour himself into his training and strategy sessions with Boomstra. Unlike many athletes in Salt Lake City he has never visualized himself crossing the Olympic finish line first or standing on the top rung of the medal stand. "That's not me," he said. "That's not something I do. What I do is I go out every day and every day is all out. I don't do 90 percent. I don't believe in 90 percent. I give 110 percent every day, that's just the way I am and I feel like if I do that everyday I will come out my Olympic goal. "I feel prepared. I'm not worried, I'm not scared, this is what I'm here for, this is what I want. This is where I need to be." "I couldn’t ask for anything better," she said. "We understand each other. We totally support each other. To have your best friend on the ice with you is unbelievable." A medal or two would make it even better. Olympic hero status awaits.