We knew it was Bode Miller's year. Banners draped outside of homes in the Alps in Europe proclaim stuff like "Bode, we're crazy for you." And European newspapers can't get enough of the American skier they have nicknamed the "Cowboy of the Snow." (whoopie ki yo, you Euro twits - Bode is from the east coast, not from the American west, but we'll let it slide.) What he is, though, is the best skier in the world.
Bode became the first American in 22 years to win skiing's overall World Cup title even though his results of the last few weeks were beginning to sag, to the point where even he was invoking every New Englander's baseball heartbreak.
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"It's been a bit embarrassing it's taken so long. It was getting a bit like the Red Sox," said Bode. "It was a bit embarrassing because it was like a curse."
Raised by hippies on a sprawling farm in Easton, New Hampshire, in a rustic home with an outhouse and no running water or electricity, Bode is the charmingly unpolished superstar who is making ski racing cool again.
Bode loves sports and seems to race not for glory or fans, but for the sheer pleasure of doing it. When he was asked by a writer to pick his best race of last season, Bode had this answer: "Super G at Val Gardena. It was fuckin' awesome. I just killed it. I made mistakes, but I made sick recoveries. I won a section, where it's like three shoop-de-doos, you're like turning all through it, and it's dark as shit. I won that section, starting in the pitch-black." He called it "one of the best races I've ever had," despite finishing sixth.
, This year, he came back from a 3-month winless streak to win the Cup (excluding his two gold medals at last month's world championships, which do not count in the World Cup standings).
He finished ahead of his only remaining challenger, Benjamin Raich of Austria, in the season's final giant slalom Saturday to capture the crown. As overall champion, Bode joins such greats as Jean-Claude Killy, Ingemar Stenmark, Marc Girardelli, Pirmin Zurbriggen, Alberto Tomba and Hermann Maier, the Austrian who won his fourth title last season. American Phil Mahre won three times from 1981-83, and Tamara McKinney is the only American woman to win it.
The 27-year-old is rebellious, and although he seems to take unnecessary chances on the slopes, he's really amazingly calculating - right down to his choice of equipment. He told Outside Magazine last year, "If you're pushing only 89 percent or even 99 percent, that can make you lose four-hundredths of a second. So it's not really a fluke. There's fluky shit involved — there's wind, there's all kinds of things — but in the end that's part of the equation. That's why it's cool to win by [a small] amount, because I feel like my extra effort made the difference."
This year, he came back from a 3-month winless streak to win the Cup (excluding his two gold medals at last month's world championships, which do not count in the World Cup standings).
He finished ahead of his only remaining challenger, Benjamin Raich of Austria, in the season's final giant slalom Saturday to capture the crown. As overall champion, Bode joins such greats as Jean-Claude Killy, Ingemar Stenmark, Marc Girardelli, Pirmin Zurbriggen, Alberto Tomba and Hermann Maier, the Austrian who won his fourth title last season. American Phil Mahre won three times from 1981-83, and Tamara McKinney is the only American woman to win it.
The 27-year-old is rebellious, and although he seems to take unnecessary chances on the slopes, he's really amazingly calculating - right down to his choice of equipment. He told Outside Magazine last year, "If you're pushing only 89 percent or even 99 percent, that can make you lose four-hundredths of a second. So it's not really a fluke. There's fluky shit involved — there's wind, there's all kinds of things — but in the end that's part of the equation. That's why it's cool to win by [a small] amount, because I feel like my extra effort made the difference."
