SESTRIERE, Italy – The good news for Bode Miller is that he won’t have to deal with any of those tacky Olympic medals he so despises.
Mr. Nike may not have skied wasted at these Games, but he certainly wasted a lot of people’s time with his uninspired skiing. Miller, the brooding 29-year-old from Nowhere, N.H., straddled a gate early in the first slalom run Saturday to put an end to a miserable Olympic performance.
He came, he saw, he conked out.
The best thing you can say about Miller at the Turin Games is that he’s one of the American Olympians who didn’t get kicked out for punching someone in the face. He can put that right near the top of his resume.
The truest thing you can say is that he didn’t seem to care very much. The shame is not in failing to medal in five events. The shame is conducting yourself as if all of this is a big hassle that isn’t worth your serious attention.
Dispassion lives here.
Can we all just forget all about this guy now? Please?
What’s that? You already have?
It probably is true that the media – guilty as charged here – care more about characters like Miller than the general public does. The fact that he came out of the gate with the intensity of a man bagging groceries isn’t all that important. He was off to the side of the course within 20 seconds, having blown one of the slalom gates near the top of the hill.
There was a moment when Miller looked down and planted his left ski pole into the snow as if he was feeling that good old agony of defeat. Then he raised his arms in a mockery of triumph, which really is what the guy should have tattooed on his forehead.
Mockery of triumph. Or just mockery, if he prefers.
There is much to be said for those who embrace the Olympic spirit, who believe that giving your best effort is the point and that medal counts are crass and jingoistic. Those people do not cash large checks from Nike and Barilla and Visa based on their ability to win medals.
Neither Miller nor highly touted teammate Daron Rahlves won a medal. The U.S. ski team that calls itself “Best in the world” managed a total of two medals – gold ones won by Ted Ligety and Julia Mancuso.
“I definitely would have thought Bode or Daron would have made medals here, for sure,” Ligety said. “The odds of them not making one is probably a lot less than them making one. It’s pretty unbelievable.”
The difference between a great run and a crash is a fraction of an inch or the slightest lack of focus. Miller had five chances to turn in a great performance, and he failed five times. That’s a bad Olympics.
But the reason Miller deserves scorn is not that he didn’t medal. It’s because he’s a hypocrite. He signs the contract but doesn’t acknowledge the fine print that explains what all the money is for. Then, when things don’t go his way, he makes really bush-league comments and does what most weak-minded athletes do – blames the media.
There is, of course, little connection between an athlete’s hype-o-meter rating and his or her actual skill level. Miller was not the best skier here, even if he was on the covers of Time and Newsweek and Modern Bride (OK, that’s not true, but you paused for a second, right?) in the same week.
That was before he came here and skied to zero medals, before he said he could just as easily have four gold medals, before he said he didn’t win because he was giving 100 percent rather than 80, before he shrugged off one defeat by saying it saved him a trip to downtown Turin for the medals ceremony.
If Miller were truly the authority-hating, iconoclastic individualist he’s marketed as (and how’s that for a contradiction in terms?), he’d be off on a mountain somewhere by himself, skiing out of range of all us shallow, clueless troglodytes who just don’t get it.
After whiffing about 15 seconds into his final event, Miller came down the hill and then fled the media area on his skis. He eventually talked to NBC, which pays vast sums of money to televise these Games, thereby making it possible for people like Miller to get paid by sponsors.
Miller said he was satisfied with his performance, that he would remain on the U.S. team if its goals were in line with his and remarked that Americans won’t pay attention to skiing again until the next Olympics.
That’s true. And with the likes of Miller representing the sport, that’s exactly what it deserves.
Ciao, Bode. Thanks for nothing.
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(c) 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
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PHOTOS (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): Bode Miller
AP-NY-02-25-06 1514EST
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