SOLDIER HOLLOW — Until Tuesday Phillip Boit didn't know he was the Tiger Woods of cross country skiing.
He didn't even know who Tiger Woods was.
"I normally don't like golf," he explained. "When I see it on television, I change the channel."
Then someone told him Tiger Woods is a black golfer, and the Kenyan smiled, a face-splitting grin.
"We are both pioneers then," Boit said.
When Boit competed in the 1998 Olympics, he was more than the first winter Olympian from Kenya; he was the first black athlete many of his competitors had ever seen on a cross country ski course.
Four years later, Boit's influence is evident. Tuesday's sprint race at Soldier Hollow included skiers from the non-nordic countries of Cameroon, Nepal, Costa Rica and Thailand.
"I think I was the one they were watching on television in Nagano and I think I brought them," Boit said. "I think I was the inspiration, not from Africa alone, but also from Thailand and Iran. That's a very good feeling now."
If they were in fact watching Boit's first Olympic race on television, they knew the sport would welcome them with open arms. As Boit wobbled to the finish line, 20 minutes after the race was won, Bjorn Daehlie, the greatest cross country skier ever, waited to embrace him.
The gesture meant so much to Boit he named his first son Daehlie.
Daehlie, a Norwegian national hero who has his own line of clothing, says skiers like Boit are good for the sport because they make it more diverse. After the Feb. 14 pursuit race, Daehlie congratulated Cameroon's Isaac Menyoli, who finished long after the winners had left the course. He later gave Menyoli his cell phone number and a uniform he had skied in.
"Up until Nagano there wasn't a black guy in the sport," says American cross country skier Justin Wadsworth. "I think it's great. If it can't spread out of some of the Scandinavian countries, it will never survive.
To many, skiers like Boit and Menyoli are the embodiment of the Olympic ideal — they compete for competition's sake.
But to others they are not an ispiration and they are not pioneers — they are a joke.
When Menyoli finished his race on Feb. 14, the scattered remains of the crowd cheered him loudly, but the reaction from a group of European journalists watching from the press tent was different. They laughed.
"There are people who think the sport belongs to the Norwegians and the Swedes, those with a rich heritage in it, and they resent what we do," says Arturo Kinch, a cross country skier from Cosa Rica who trains in Denver. "But that's pretty rare; most people are really supportive."
Boit bristles at suggestions his participation is nothing more than a publicity stunt for Nike, his sponsor company. It has been reported the idea of turning a Kenyan marathon runner into cross country skier started at Nike.
"Let people think I am being used, let them wait and they will see for themselves," he said. "They are going to shut their mouths. I'm going for a medal. Why not? This is four more years."
Boit is so serious about his Olympic dream he named his month-old daughter — whom he has never seen — Olympia. He named his first daughter Faith, fitting for a man who lives half the year in Kenya with his family and the other half in Finland training.
In some ways, Phillip Boit and Tiger Woods have nothing in common. Boit is a former police officer who usually finishes last in a sport most Americans don't care about.
Woods is a multimillionaire who dominates his sport and is one of the most recognizable athletes in the world.
But perhaps in the way sports matters most — its influence on the way we live our lives — they are the same. Both have proven that in sport, as in life, color doesn't matter.
E-mail: jhyde@desnews.com