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Out of the Pack Short tracker Rusty Smith loves his sport's thrills and spills By Andy Fledderjohann originally published on usolympicteam.com 1/30/2002 Rusty Smith understands the risks. In fact, he loves them. The cruel truth about his frenetic sport - short track speed skating - is there are no guarantees. Skating in small groups around a tight oval, competitors must finish in the top two in each preliminary round to work their way into the winner-take-all final. One slip or discreet nudge or even a NASCAR-like pileup can send four years of Olympic preparation skidding across the ice. In many ways, it's roller derby on skates. "I love being inside of a pack, having people around me," Smith said. "I love jockeying for position, moving up, trying to find places to go somewhere, falling, whatever. It's all part of it. You're going 30 mph through a corner and there's not very much room for error. Even when I think about it, I get excited about it." Smith of Sunset Beach, Calif., equates darting in and out of the pack at such high speeds to "driving 150 mph through traffic in Los Angeles - and you're having a baby so you've got to get somewhere fast. That's pretty much what it is." Smith, 22, is one of the veterans of a U.S. Team intending to take full advantage of home ice come February in Salt Lake City. The team also features young star Apolo Anton Ohno, who finished last year's World Cup season No. 1 in the world. Smith and Ohno, 19, are daily training partners at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., and pair up on the U.S. 5,000-meter relay team which won gold at last year's World Championships and opened this season by capturing a silver medal at the Short Track Olympic Qualifier in Salt Lake. While Ohno grabs the headlines, Smith's experience in this fickle sport tells him Olympic medals, regardless of pre-race credentials, are always up for grabs as well. "I started training with (Ohno) when he was 14," Smith said. "He's doing well for himself and he's part of my team. When it comes down to it, we're against each other, but there's 364 other days where we're on the ice together and making each other better. "There's no way we would get the press that we're getting without him doing what he's doing. Just because he's looked at as a medal favorite, I think you're going to see a few medals come out of the U.S. Team. And then people are going to look twice and say, 'Oh, we didn't even notice (the others).' But as a team, we know." Smith, who also enjoys the speed thrills of drag racing, became a member of the U.S. Junior Team in 1995, just a few years after he first took to the ice. As he matured and conditioned his 5-foot-8, 160-pound frame, he earned a spot on the senior squad by the time the 1998 Olympics arrived. However, an inexperienced Smith failed to finish in the top 10 in his individual races. "Now looking back I really didn't know what I was doing," he said. "I learned a lot. I can go into this Olympics knowing a lot more, not worrying about having 15,000 people in the stands. I loved it. It was an awesome, awesome time. But I was so focused on what I was doing there was nothing else. My goal was to come home with an Olympic medal. And there was nothing else in life except that Olympic medal." Ohno and Smith both qualified in all four short track events. It's a well-worn sports cliché, but Smith knows anything can happen on any given day - even at the Olympics - especially in this sport. It's something he and Ohno remind each other of often. "We go back and forth on a daily basis," Smith said. "The first day of racing in Calgary I missed the final and he made the final but got disqualified and finished sixth. Between the two of us we look at each other and go, 'No medals today.' So the next day we try to do better. That's our thing. We're not against each other. We're trying to up one another but at the same time we're there for each other. "When he wins a medal, that's a medal for the U.S. team. I don't look at it as just for him. I train with him every day, so I'm part of it." Smith says he's also skating as a member of another team, specifically his co-workers at The Home Depot, where he works during the off-season and part-time in season, as part of the company's support of the Olympic Job Opportunities Program. Depending on his training schedule, Smith can be found in the hardware department of Home Depot stores in both Huntington Beach and Colorado Springs. Smith jokes that he answers as many questions about skating as screws. "I go into work and the first question I get from my boss is 'How's skating?'" he said. "I walked in one day and the boss looked at me and said, 'Are you tired?' I could barely open my eyes because of training that morning and he said, 'Go home and rest. Skating is more important right now.' Things like that, it's an incredible company. They're totally there for me. If I didn't have the Olympic job, I would not be here. It's the only reason I'm able to (afford to) skate."