William Dutton is going to Sochi, and he's bringing a little piece of Humboldt with him to Russia.
A speed skater that still represents the Humboldt Speed Skating Club, Dutton has blazed a trail to the top of his profession by qualifying for the Canadian team that will be heading to Sochi in less than two months for the Winter Olympics.
Dutton, who now lives and trains out of Calgary but still skates under the Humboldt banner, recorded a time of 69.38 seconds over two heats at the 500m distance at the Olympic trials in Calgary. It was the third best time overall at that distance. He also finished with a time of 1:08.94 in the 1000m event, the fourth best time. Dutton will be competing for Canada at both distances in Sochi, though the team won't officially be announced until Jan. 20.
"I believed I could qualify but it wasn't on my mind," Dutton said of his attitude before the event. "I wanted to skate the race how I wanted to rather than react to the environment."
Over the past two years Dutton has focused on the mental side of his training regimen. The night before races he'll often visualize how the race is going to go and write down a plan of attack. It wasn't always so detailed, though.
Dutton is a world-class skater now, but before he ascended to those heights he was just another skater, albeit a very talented one, at the club in Humboldt.
"He was always a very good skater," said Larry Thiel, who coached Dutton until he was about 16 or 17. "He had good raw talent and it was just a matter of honing that."
That raw talent was obvious at the first speed skating event he ever participated in. It was in Saskatoon and the kid from Humboldt won while wearing hockey skates.
"They couldn't even give me the trophy because I wasn't a club member yet," Dutton said with a laugh. "So I joined the club, came back the next year and won it again."
Dutton spent most of his time in Humboldt trying to catch better skaters like Addison Thiel and Nathan Bernhard. That motivation propelled him to move to Calgary after graduating from high school to continue his training.
"Even when he was young he was very good on his feet. He had very quick feet," Thiel said. "Even if he was going to stumble he could catch himself when most skaters would fall."
That sense of balance and co-ordination proved critical in Calgary, where top Olympic hopeful Denny Morrison fell coming into the last turn of the 1000m race, just steps ahead of Dutton. In a sport where the difference between glory and anonymity is measured in hundredths or thousandths of a second, a fall is almost always fatal.
"If you make one mistake in the 500, you're done," Dutton said.
Those mistakes are magnified when the ice is less than perfect, as it was in Calgary. For some reason the ice wasn't flooded between the women's and men's competitions, leaving a surface pocked with holes and crusted with frost. It was a situation ripe for disaster, and Dutton narrowly averted his own nightmare when Morrison spun out just in front of him.
"I was able to sidestep him at the last second," Dutton said. "I've got to thank my hockey training for that move."
Dutton's presence on the ice at all was a bit of a miracle, as the Olympic trials came less than a month after he cut his leg at a World Cup event. The cut required a total of 12 stitches to his quadriceps and calf, but he was back on the ice within two weeks.
Between now and the opening of the Sochi Games on Feb. 7. Dutton will be keeping himself extremely busy, first traveling to Nagano, Japan for the World Sprint Speed Skating Championships Jan. 18-19 before returning to Canada for the announcement of the Olympic team. He'll then head to Germany for two weeks of training before finally making it to Sochi, where he hopes to claim a spot on the podium.
"My goal has been to win a medal," Dutton said. "That's been my focus the whole year. I'm only hundredths of seconds off of guys who've won medals, so I'm right in the mix."
* Fans of William can follow him on his website, www.williamduttonskater.com, on Facebook or follow him on Twitter, @williamcdutton.
