Bode Miller

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Men’s Alpine Skiing
Olympic medalist
Bode Miller
Medal record
Silver	2002 Salt Lake City	Giant Slalom
Silver	2002 Salt Lake City	Combined
World Championships
Gold	2003 St. Moritz	Giant Slalom
Gold	2003 St. Moritz	Combined
Gold	2005 Bormio	Super-G
Gold	2005 Bormio	Downhill
Silver	2003 St. Moritz	super-G

Samuel Bode Miller (born October 12, 1977), best known as Bode Miller (pronounced Bo-dee, in IPA [boʊˈdiː]), is an American alpine skier. In 2005, he became the first American in 22 years to win the overall alpine skiing World Cup title, since Phil Mahre and Tamara McKinney in 1983. Earlier during his championship season, with a victory on November 28, 2004, he became only the fifth man to win World Cup races in all five disciplines: slalom, giant slalom, Super-G, downhill, and combined. As of 2007, Miller's total of 25 race victories on the World Cup circuit ranks second all-time among Americans behind Mahre. He is also a four-time World Champion in four different disciplines and has a pair of silver medals from the 2002 Winter Olympics.

1 Biography
2 Publicity, press and promotions
- 2.1 Olympics coverage
3 2002/03 Season
4 2003/04 Season
5 2004/05 Season
6 2006 Winter Olympic Games
7 2006/07 Season
8 Trivia
9 World Cup victories
- 9.1 Overall and single discipline results
- 9.2 Race victories
10 References
11 External links

[edit] Biography

Born in Easton, New Hampshire, to Jo Kenney and Woody Miller, he grew up in Franconia, New Hampshire, a small community in the heart of New Hampshire's ski region. His family, including older sister Kyla, younger sister Wren (short for Genesis Wren Bungo Windrushing Turtleheart) and younger brother Chelone (full name Nathaniel Kinsman Ever Chelone Skan), lived on 450 acres (2 km²) of land in a forest, where his parents celebrated the Solstices, in a log cabin without electricity or indoor plumbing. He was homeschooled until the third grade, but after his parents divorced, he began attending public school. He applied for and got a scholarship to the Carrabassett Valley Academy, a training ground for skiers in Maine. His mother's parents owned and started the Tamarack Tennis Camp, and he has played tennis and soccer since childhood. Miller currently serves as Director of Skiing at Bretton Woods Mountain Resort in New Hampshire.

Miller first gained widespread recognition when he won two silver medals at the 2002 Winter Olympics in the Giant Slalom and Combined events, though he had been known to skiing fans since he burst onto the World Cup scene as an 18-year-old in 1996.Miller is known for his reckless style, often risking crashes to increase his chances of winning a given race; in his book, Bode: Go Fast, Be Good, Have Fun, Miller stated that his goal as a skier was not to win medals, but rather to ski "as fast as the natural universe will allow." Recently, Miller has also become famous for his reclusive (but outspoken) personality, and for his sundry attention-getting statements.

[edit] Publicity, press and promotions

Miller's fame was partly spawned by his 2002 Winter Olympics slalom performance where, as a relatively unknown athlete, he hiked back up the course to finish after missing a gate – a rare, mostly symbolic act of dedication in a sport where hundredths of second often separate gold from bronze.

[edit] Olympics coverage

On the program 60 Minutes, in January 2006, Miller described the act of skiing "wasted" and compared it to lawlessly driving while intoxicated.^[1] He issued an apology for these comments less than a week after they aired.^[2] During an interview with Rolling Stone later the same month, he stated his belief that Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds, and unspecified other athletes "knowingly" cheated by using performance enhancing drugs.^[3]

After his disappointing 2006 Olympic performance, Miller summarized his experience by stating that his "quality of life is the priority," and repeated what had become his mantra throughout the Olympics: "I'm just trying to ski in a way that's exciting for me." In an interview shortly after his last race, he said that it had "been an awesome two weeks," and that he "got to party and socialize at an Olympic level." Bob Costas' primetime editorial, after an unapologetic Miller interview with Tom Brokaw, the conclusion was offered that Miller might finally get what he wanted: to be unceremoniously forgotten. Miller was consequently vilified in the American and international media; editorials focused on his attitude of simply not caring about the Olympics or about his performance.

Many perceived his "whatever" attitude a violation of the "Olympic Spirit," and in contrast to Miller's big-money deals with dedication-oriented sponsors like Nike which espouses the motto "Just Do It." Some of the responsibility for the excessive 2006 Olympic publicity rests with Nike's relentless advertising campaign, in which they urged consumers to "Join Bode." This prompted Washington Post sportswriter Sally Jenkins to ask, "Where? At the bar?" in response to his well-publicized nights on the town in Sestriere).^[4] Some have argued that the blame for Miller's publicity crash-and-burn rests with himself, his PR people, and his manager, all of whom made Miller available for a veritable media blitz in the months leading up to the Olympics.

“

[The Olympic hype] is going to be a tough thing for me to manage. My actions are not always consistent. I'm super-mellow and laid back, but I'm always thinking and running 100,000 scenarios through my head. Sometimes I'm disciplined, but I like to be a total slacker, too. I party hard, but I train hard. People are going to try and figure me out and figure out my motivations, and it's going to be a circus.

”

Always a bit of a loose cannon, Miller frequently responds to questions from the press with, as Layden put it, "sermons that are often delivered without regard to consequences" (witness his 60 Minutes and Rolling Stone interviews), and the inner conflict in recent years between his sudden fame and wealth (his contract with Atomic Skis reportedly paid him a salary of seven figures) and his rustic, no-frills upbringing has only seemed to heighten his sense of recklessness.

Miller's autobiography, Bode: Go Fast, Be Good, Have Fun, co-written with his friend Jack McEnany, was published by Villard/Random House on October 18, 2005. Miller also became the first American alpine skier since Tommy Moe to endorse a video game when Bode Miller Alpine Racing was released for mobile phones on January 30, 2006, followed by Bode Miller Alpine Skiing for Playstation 2 and Windows on February 6. Miller is the subject of a recent biographical film, Flying Downhill, which looks at the people and the place he comes from, and where exactly each fits within his philosophy.

[edit] 2002/03 Season

Miller sought the overall FIS World Cup title but fell just short, finishing second to Stephan Eberharter.

[edit] 2003/04 Season

In this season Bode Miller won FIS World Cup titles in two disciplines: Giant Slalom and Combined but placed 4th in the competition for the overall title.

[edit] 2004/05 Season

In the 2004/2005 season Miller won his first overall FIS World Cup title, defeating Austrians Benjamin Raich and Hermann Maier.

Miller made history by winning at least one race in each of the four standard World Cup disciplines: Slalom, Giant Slalom, Super-G, and Downhill; by winning a slalom in Sestriere, Italy, on December 13, 2004, he joined Marc Girardelli of Luxembourg, who had been the first man to accomplish this feat in 1989. Miller accomplished the feat in less time than any previous skier, male or female; the victory was his sixth of the season after only ten races. Miller has historically fared well at the FIS World Ski Championships. At the 2003 World Championships in St. Moritz, Switzerland, he won three medals: gold in Giant Slalom and combined, and silver in Super-G. At the 2005 World Championships in Bormio, Italy he won two gold medals, in Super-G and Downhill. At the 2006 US National Championships, Miller won the Downhill and Giant Slalom titles.

[edit] 2006 Winter Olympic Games

Despite the hype surrounding Miller in the weeks prior to the 2006 Winter Olympics, every one of Miller's five medal bids in the Turin Games fell short: he finished a disappointing 5th in the Downhill, was disqualified – while in first place at the time – during the second leg of the Combined event, received a DNF (Did Not Finish) in the Super G, tied for 6th in the Giant Slalom, and claimed another DNF after missing a gate in the Slalom. While his Olympic Alpine Skiing finishes were respectable by historical American standards, they disappointed expectations and were widely perceived as a personal and team failure. (See Media coverage above)

[edit] 2006/07 Season

Bode Miller had 4 first place finishes in the early going of the 2007 World Cup. Miller finished 4th overall and won the Super G title.

[edit] Trivia

On July 29, 2006, Miller signed a one-day contract to play baseball for the Nashua Pride (Canadian-American League). He went 0-2 with two strikeouts, however he did make an acrobatic catch in left field, which earned national attention by being featured by ESPN [5], among others. The team said it will donate at least $5,000 from ticket sales for the game to Miller's Turtle Ridge Foundation, which will give the money to the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

[edit] World Cup victories

[edit] Overall and single discipline results

Season	Discipline
2003	Combined
2004	Giant Slalom
2004	Combined
2005	Overall
2005	Super-G
2007	Super-G

[edit] Race victories

25 total wins (4 downhill, 5 Super G, 9 giant slalom, 5 slalom, 2 combined)

Date	Location	Race
9 December 2001	Val d'Isère	Giant Slalom
10 December 2001	Madonna di Campiglio	Slalom
6 January 2002	Adelboden	Slalom
22 January 2002	Schladming	Slalom
22 December 2002	Alta Badia	Giant Slalom
4 January 2003	Kranjska Gora	Giant Slalom
26 October 2003	Sölden	Giant Slalom
22 November 2003	Park City	Giant Slalom
11 January 2004	Chamonix	Combined
January 25, 2004	Kitzbühel	Combined
February 15, 2004	St. Anton	Slalom
28 February 2004	Kranjska Gora	Giant Slalom
24 October 2004	Sölden	Giant Slalom
27 November 2004	Lake Louise	Downhill
28 November 2004	Lake Louise	Super-G
3 December 2004	Beaver Creek	Downhill
12 December 2004	Val d'Isere	Giant Slalom
13 December 2004	Sestrières	Slalom
11 March 2005	Lenzerheide	Super-G
3 December 2005	Beaver Creek	Giant Slalom
16 March 2006	Åre	Super-G
1 December 2006	Beaver Creek	Downhill
15 December 2006	Val Gardena	Super-G
20 December 2006	Hinterstoder	Super-G
13 January 2007	Wengen	Downhill