THE TRUTH BEHIND BODE
WHY BODE WON'T GIVE IN
The headlines scream scandal: Ski racing star Bode Miller quits the U. S. ski team! Bode Miller's cousin kills a cop!
It seems like a dark time for the golden child of the ski world. But in fact, it may be a rebirth for Miller, whose real story has never been told. Despite the gossip, few know who this athlete is or how his background directs his actions.
Miller burst onto the World Cup scene in 1996. He was 18 then, friendly and naive, unfamiliar with the sophisticated and very political world of international ski racing.
Miller grew up in a rural town in New Hampshire. His family were hippies, in the nature-loving sense of the word. They lived on 450 acres in the middle of a forest, in a log home that had no indoor plumbing and no electricity. It was a fairly isolated existence. Bode did not go to public school; he was home-schooled until the third grade.
He learned to ski mostly on his own, taking daring risks that taught him incredible balance and the skills of quick recoveries. Everyone in the small ski town of Franconia quickly realized that young Bode had a gift for speed. Soon he was given a scholarship to a ski academy in Maine, where his amazing ability on skis was fine-tuned under the discipline of top coaches. He learned how to train, how to build a ski racer's body.
But with his purist's background, Bode did not have the traditional athlete's attitude about sport. To him, racing was not all about winning. He once told this reporter that he could win a World Cup, yet it would not be a true victory for him unless he knew he raced the very best he possibly could---and sometimes he could win without doing that. To Miller, that was a defeat.
Here's a character clue to Bode Miller: In the 2002 Olympic slalom at Deer Valley, the snow had turned soft and slushy. The powerful edge set demanded in slalom was impossible. Miller fell. Instead of skiing off, as most athletes would have done, Miller got back in the course. He fell again. And again. And again. But each time, he got back in the course. He did not give up. He finished, though he had no chance of winning. He knew he would finish dead last, but it was important to him to finish.
As Miller began dominating ski racing in the mid-90's, he was stunned by what happened in the press. Statements he never made appeared as his quotes in newspapers and magazines. Reporters who had never interviewed him wrote lengthy analysis's of his psyche, which shocked and angered him. Miller is known to have a passion for truth in all its aspects.
For example when Miller won the World Cup overall title, he got rip-roaring drunk, a tradition that is part of the World Cup. The difference is, Miller admitted it, and admitted he had not yet sobered up when he participated in a race the following day. He mentioned how hard it was to race "wasted," because it was an unusual experience for him. But the words were exaggerated into headlines, and escalated into a story that the champion had a drinking problem, which is not true.
Miller was astonished by the false gossip. The ski team wanted him to apologize for the statement, which he refused to do. "If I celebrated and got drunk because I won the World Cup title, the first American to do that in 22 years, I don't see anything wrong with that. How many times does someone win the overall World Cup title?" he said. Miller felt that USSA did not support him.
From the start, he was also annoyed by life on the U. S. ski team, where athletes are frequently trotted out to ski and socialize with wealthy donors to USSA, the governing body of skiing and snowboarding in America. Nor did he cater to the press. At World Cups, he would often leave the "mix zone" of reporters and go over to talk to fans.
But the biggest problem for Miller was the lock-step routine of life on the World Cup circuit. Racers travel from race mountain to race mountain, crammed together in vans; they bunk together in small hotel rooms, they all eat at the same time, watch training videos at the same time, and go to bed at the same time. They eat strange foreign food, sleep in strange beds and live in each other's faces. It's a wearying existence, especially for a young man who grew up with a great deal of personal space and privacy.
So Miller purchased a large RV, hired some friends to drive it to his race venues, imported the American food he was used to, and made a home away from home for himself.
This did not suit USSA. They wanted Miller to adhere to the lockstep existance of the other team members, even though life on that road was a constant source of complaint from racers, often given as a reason for the American lack of success on the World Cup.
It was not about the RV. It was about a power struggle between the ski team and an athlete who was not dominating the way he had previously. It is a fact that when an athlete is down, USSA will often attack.
Miller says he knows what he needs to win, and part of that is the homey environment he created for himself on the circuit. He refused to bend to the demands of USSA. The result was his resignation from the team on May 12. It was made more stressful by simultaneous national news about a shootout that left both his cousin and a police officer dead in his home town, a story that would not have made headlines without the connection to Bode.
It was not the best start for finding new sponsors as an independant athlete.
He is not the first skier to try to race the circuit independently. From Bill Johnson to the incredible Julie Paresian to Kristina Koznick, others have tried and been unable to compete without the structure provided by USSA.
Miller will have to provide his own sponsor money for expenses, which is about $100,000 a year. He will have to do his own race entries, appear at all team captain's meetings and take care of a thousand little details that could drive a non-conformist crazy. It could be a rebirth, or it could be the end of Miller's career.
But quietly, other racers on the U. S. team are cheering him on.