In an age when many Olympic athletes have well-connected agents and endorsement deals, there remain a handful who have taken the hard road to next month's Winter Games in Nagano.
Bobsledder Chip Minton first got an idea of his speed when he was a prison guard chasing convicts through the woods. Curlers Tim Somerville and John Gordon have been scheduling practice time around their commitments to work and family. Speedskater KC Boutiette gave up the money of the in-line skating circuit to go for Olympic gold on the ice. None of them are typical Olympians - but then, that's what makes them some of the most intriguing people heading for these Winter Games.
World class on the mat and behind the sled
As 'Mr. World Class' on the World Championship Wrestling circuit, Chip Minton makes his living delivering flying drop kicks to masked bad guys. At Central State Prison in Macon, Ga., where Minton used to work as a guard, he routinely broke up riots.
Being a pusher and brakeman on the Olympic bobsled team seems sedate by comparison. In his decade on the ice, Minton, 28, has channeled his aggressive nature into becoming one of the best bobsled pushers in the world. With his raw power and his teammates' skill, he said, the U.S. team plans to go to Nagano and 'kick some European [rear].'
'Bobsled and wrestling are the two most extreme sports in the world, and I want to be on top in both,' said Minton, who placed 14th with teammate Jim Herberich in the two-man bobsled at the 1994 Olympics. 'We're ready to get on the ice and get it on.'
Minton knew little about ice when he traveled from Macon to Calgary in 1988 to try out for the bobsled team. He wore only a sweater and had to borrow cold-weather gear when temperatures fell to 20-below zero. He crashed twice, but he liked the sport enough to continue.
As a prison guard, Minton said chasing escapees through the Georgia woods provided fine training for bobsledding. But he had to take unpaid leave for his real training, and he and his family had so little money they had to move in with friends. When Minton returned from the 1994 Olympics, pro wrestler Ric Flair sent him a fax inviting him to try wrestling. Minton decided to do it because he wanted a less-dangerous job - and ended up with a broken thumb, a cracked rib and a concussion after his first match.
When Minton began wrestling, he was eating turkey sandwiches out of a cooler and traveling 2,000 miles a week. He's earning more money now, and an Olympic medal would give him another boost.
'It will take a medal here, and probably another one in Salt Lake City [in 2002] for us to get attention,' Minton said. 'But I'm not in it for fame. I've got a wife, Dannah, and a little girl, Taylor Brooke; I put a picture of her in the sled to remind me why I'm doing this. We're ready to go to Japan and get ourselves some medals.'
Son followed father in working man's game
Tim Somerville never has been to Karuizawa, Japan, but he's hoping there is a McDonald's somewhere near the curling rink. The Roseville groundskeeper isn't the seaweed and sushi type, and he isn't about to change his diet with the Olympics just around the corner.
Somerville, 37, will skip [lead] the U.S. men's curling team in the first Olympic curling tournament to be granted full-medal status. His teammates are John Gordon, a pressman from Columbia Heights; Mike Peplinski, a teacher from Eau Claire, Wis.; and Myles Brundidge, a papermaker from Nekoosa, Wis. All four are elite athletes who have competed in world championships. They also are blue-collar Midwesterners who have had to get time off from work and extra help with the kids to work toward their Olympic dream.
'This is a working man's game,' said Somerville, who with his father, Bud, competed in the 1992 Winter Games when curling was a demonstration sport. 'I don't know if that will ever change, even with the Olympics. Everyone at work has been real excited about it. I don't think it's going to hit me until it happens.'
Because curling is a game of skill and strategy, people of all ages can compete. Some Olympic curlers are old enough to be the parents of many fellow Olympians, lending a new kind of diversity to the delegations. The Games don't celebrate only the young and strong anymore. They celebrate people like Somerville, who has curled since he was a child, and Gordon, who has been marking off the days on his calendar since his team won the Olympic trials in December.
Their trip to the Olympics has made minor celebrities of the four men. They will appear on 'Late Night with David Letterman' and '48 Hours,' and author Frank DeFord interviewed them at the trials. Though they are enjoying the attention, they admit it feels rather odd. Gordon said he expects to be in awe of his fellow Olympians and hopes to get an autograph or two - and maybe a story to tell the folks at work.
'It took a lot of sacrifices by family and friends to make this happen,' said Gordon, 39, who is married and has four children. 'Everyone lent a helping hand, whether that meant picking up the kids from day care or watching them for a couple hours so we could practice. I hoped and prayed that some day I would earn the right to go to the Olympics. Just to say I'm an Olympian is something very special.'
In-line or on-ice, skating is still hard work
KC Boutiette always assumed Olympic athletes had it made. In 1993, he was making a small but steady income on the in-line skating circuit, but he figured his $1,100 monthly salary was a pittance compared to what Olympians pulled down.
Now he knows how wrong he was. Boutiette, 27, gave up in-line racing for speedskating in 1994 and discovered that Olympians aren't handed houses and cars. But that didn't deter the former construction worker from Tacoma, Wash. He made his first Olympic team only three months after taking up speedskating, and he hopes to medal this time.
'I found out that in ice skating, you have to work,' said Boutiette, who finished fourth at the 1997 world allround championships. 'When I went to ice skating, I was really shocked to find out [athletes] had jobs. I thought Olympic athletes should not have to work, that they should have funding to roll them through the whole year. It was tough to leave in-line, because I was making a little money at it. But now that I'm on the national [speedskating] team, ice skating can fund me.'
Boutiette grew up roller skating at a local rink, but he quit when he was 16 because he had no chance to go to the Olympics or make any money. He began in-line skating when he was 22 and quickly began winning races. Boutiette tried speedskating because he thought it would be good cross-training for his in-line career, and after only a few months on ice, his times were good enough to qualify for the 1994 Olympic trials.
It wasn't always easy. Boutiette said the close-knit speedskating community viewed him as an outsider when he started, but he feels fully accepted now. His success has paved the way for more in-line skaters - including his girlfriend, Jennifer Rodriguez, who also could medal in Nagano - to switch to speedskating.
Boutiette said he might try racing in speedskating marathons in Holland next year. Those races are quite lucrative, and could put him in the elite company of Olympians whose success has provided that coveted house and car.
'In '94, I got sick after the trials,' Boutiette said. 'At the Olympics, I skated my worst ever. That won't happen this time.'
