Bode Miller

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Olympic medal record
Men’s Alpine Skiing
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) (nickname derived from middle name pronounced Bo-dee, in IPA [boʊˈdiː]), best known as Bode Miller, is an American alpine skier.

1 Biography
2 2006 Winter Olympic Games
3 Trivia
4 External links
5 World Cup victories

[edit] Biography

Born in Easton, New Hampshire, to Jo Kenney and Woody Miller, Bode Miller 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 Genesis Wren and younger brother Chelone, 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 resides in Bretton Woods, 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. While still a teenager, Miller pioneered the use of hourglass-shaped (or "parabolic") skis, shaving two seconds off his time in his first run while utilizing them. Miller is also known for his reckless style, often risking crashes to increase his chances of winning a given race; in his book, 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.

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 claimed Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds, and unspecified other athletes "knowingly" cheated by using performance enhancing drugs. [3] In the 2002/2003 season Miller sought the overall FIS World Cup title but fell just short, finishing second to Austrian Stephan Eberharter. In the 2003/2004 season he won FIS World Cup titles in two disciplines: Giant Slalom and Combined but placed 4th in the competition for the overall title. In the 2004/2005 season Miller won his first overall FIS World Cup title, defeating Austrians Benjamin Raich and Hermann Maier. Miller also won the 2005 FIS World Cup title in Super-G and was second in both Downhill and Giant Slalom.

In the 2004/2005 season, Miller also 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.

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 complicated philosophy.

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, it disappointed expectations and was widely perceived as a personal and team failure. Miller has been the subject of severe criticism in the wake of his Turin performance. Bob Costas' prime-time editorial, after an unapologetic Miller interview with Tom Brokaw, featured the uncharacteristically savage conclusion that Miller might finally get what he wanted: to be unceremoniously forgotten. Miller was subsequently vilified in the American and international media; editorials focused mostly on his attitude, accusing him 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 to "Just Do It."

Miller's fame was partly spawned by his 2002 Olympic 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 separate Gold from Bronze. After his disappointing 2006 Olympic performance, though, 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."

Some of the responsibility for the excessive publicity rests with Nike's relentless advertising campaign, in which they urged consumers to "Join Bode" (prompting 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 Bode'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.

Prior to the 2006 Games, Miller told Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated, "[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. But whatever his motivations, Miller seems to adhere strongly to his home state's motto, "Live Free or Die," and his 2006 Winter Olympic performance fits perfectly with it: he may not have won, but he certainly did things his way.

[edit] Trivia

On July 29, 2006, Miller signed a one-day contract to play for the Nashua Pride (Canadian-American League). He went 0-2 with two strikeouts, however did make an acrobatic catch in leftfield, 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] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Bode Miller

Bode Miller USA.com - official site
U.S. Olympic Team.com - Bode Miller
NBC Olympics.com profile, videos, photos, results
FIS-ski.com - Bode Miller - results
Ski-db.com - results - Bode Miller
New York Times.com - "Miller Trades Technique for High Speed" video
Internet Movie Database - Bode Miller
MSNBC - Daron Rahlves fires back at teammate Miller's comments
Aspen Times.com - "Lovin' Bode No Matter What" - March 2006
Radio Faction.com - Ask Bode Miller
"Bode By Jake" Bode's best friend's blog about their Olympic adventures together in their RV
"The Heroism of Bode Miller" article
Rutland Herald.com - "An ugly snapshot of Bode Miller" - 25-Feb-2006

[edit] World Cup victories

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
1 December 2006	Beaver Creek	Downhill

Men's Alpine skiing World Cup winners (overall)

World champions in men's giant slalom

World Champions in Men's Super-G
1985: Pirmin Zurbriggen \| 1987: Pirmin Zurbriggen \| 1989: Martin Hangl \| 1991: Stephan Eberharter \| 1993: Lasse Kjus \| 1996: Atle Skårdal \| 1997: Atle Skårdal \| 1999: Lasse Kjus and Hermann Maier \| 2001: Daron Rahlves \| 2003: Stephan Eberharter \| 2005: Bode Miller