Writing this article was a spur of the moment thing, a feeling in my sparked by this outpouring of raw human emotion on the part of Bode Miller. Meer minutes after realizing the last installment of this utopian story of skiing for Miller, he sank into a slump and draped his arms over a short fence as tears streamed down his cheeks.
For several seconds, this scene was broadcast to the world for these tears came in the middle of an NBC interview. For several seconds, we watched as Miller, this famed, calm in the face of competition man was overcome with deep, raging emotion that poured forth in this deep, gut wrenching fit of sadness. Unlike these scenes we see of the champion crying these were definitely not tears of joy, they were tears of sadness, all stemming from one thing, the loss of one person. That person was Bode's brother who passed away last April.
Born in October of 1977, Bode Miller was a mountain boy from the start. Within just a few weeks of his birth, his parents and all 4 of their then born children picked up and moved to an isolated cabin in a small town called Franconia. With a name that sounds fresh out of some story about magicians and a magical journey, Franconia was a town nestled between the green slopes of the Mt Lafayette and the ragged cliffs of Cannon Mountain, a vastly successful skiing destination and so Miller was born into this culture of mountain living and held within it for the better part of his childhood. Their house had no water or electricity and frequently got buried by the feet of mountain snow that that part of New Hampshire would regularly endure. But it was with these storms, these bouts of frigid cold that those closest to Bode began to recognize his skiing talents. Before long, Cannon's slopes became a regular destination for the Millers and just as quickly, he even outgrew that. Miller was locked in with a full scholarship to Carrabassett Valley Ski Racing Academy before he even finished his junior year in high school. It was at Carrabassett that Miller first snagged the attention of the US Alpine Skiing team whom he would eventually be a part of for the 1998 Olympic Games in Nagano Japan.
At last, big bad Bode had arrived.
Since then, Miller has become without a doubt the greatest male alpine skier in the history of the sport and had already racked up a phenomenal 7 medals in major races before he even hit his 30th birthday. Of course, it was the 2 silver medals in Salt Lake City, 2002 that were the most remembered.
From the beginning of his career to this present day, Bode Miller has been a man who has won races by doing things other racers will not even think about. He takes tighter lines in slalom, hits jumps with more speed in downhill and super G and simply stays in the racing tuck, longer and in more technical situations than anybody else in the sport.
Though this reckless style has certainly brought about its fair share of crashes Miller came into these Sochi games coming off a 1 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze, performance in Vancouver and sitting just 1 medal away from breaking the all-time record for most won by a men's skier.
Long story short he got it done. After finishing 8th, 12th and 7th in his first 3 races of these games, Miller had one last shot and though he made mistakes, though he nearly skied off course midway through the Super G, Bode tied for bronze and so the legacy had been completed. But as we begin to get some time between that moment and this present moment, the lasting memory of the 2014 Super G final in Sochi Russia will not be the actual race. No, it will be what happened after it, the interview.
To give a little more background, just as Bode Miller loved and dominated his route to skiing fame, his younger brother Chelone Miller loved snowboarding and was following a path similar to that that led Bode to Nagano 1998. Chelone of Chile as he was called by many, was a gifted freestyle snowboarder who was favored to be sent to Sochi with the US Olympic team right alongside his older brother.
But nevertheless, early last April, Chelone was found dead in a van he was confirmed to have been living in. An autopsy of his body later revealed that he had suffered a seizure while sleeping in the van and died shortly thereafter.
Ever since the inevitable call that told the still living Bode Miller of his 29 year old brother's passing, Bode has been a different man. According to many who ski with him he has been more composed, quieter and obviously struggling with the immense grief that this tragedy has forced his family to deal with. And yet he still had one drive, one feeling that he wanted to win one final race, one final medal for Chelone and as the games begin to wind down, he knew that Sunday was his last chance.
As NBC's cameras panned in on the starting gates atop Rosa Kutor, the venue for Olympic skiing in Sochi, Miller could be seen looking to the sky and whispering some unknown phrase that was soon whisked away by the clouds and the frigid wind of that day. And then the beep came, Bode flew out of the gates and dropped into his tuck before pushing 70 miles per hour and exploding down this 1.3 mile downhill course.
Upon the announcement of his time and the bronze medal, Bode won with it, he was immediately swarmed by reporters, one of whom had a man with a camera behind them. NBC's Christen Cooper conducted the interview that was not even broadcast live for the event was put on tape delay so as to allow it to be locked into the primetime. At first, the questions were normal, asking about the race, what this medal meant to him, so on and so forth. But when Miller said that this bronze was different because of the turbulent year he had dealt with, Cooper began to assault him with questions about his brother.
"I know you wanted to be here with Chelly, really experiencing these Games. How much does this mean to you to come up with this great performance for him? And was it for him?" She asked.
"I don't know if it's really for him but I wanted to come here and, I dunno, make myself proud, but" he replied before tears began to stream down his face and he trailed off.
The interview should have stopped there...but it did not.
"When you're looking up in the sky at the start, we see you there and it looks like you're talking to somebody. What's going on there?" Cooper pressed and at that point, Miller completely broke down, slumping against a fence and letting lose all the sadness he had carried and allowed to drive him through these games.
Faintly, one could hear Cooper whisper sorry to a non-responsive Bode Miller.
You see Sochi 2014 has been a strange Olympics. For all the worry or fear of attack we felt leading up to these games, the Russian security force has done a pretty good job keeping things under control. And so that allows for us to peel back that far superior subject of attention and look at how much emotion an Olympics like this can solicit from a competitor. In a race that received far less attention than this, Ronald Mulder though he had won speed skating gold but watched at the victory was stolen from him by a timing error. A few days later, TJ Oshie pulled off his heroic shootout performance to send the US to the quarterfinals. But this was different. With Bode Miller this kind of emotion had nothing to do with the race that preceded it.
In the wake of most likely the final race of Bode Miller's career, his sadness was our sadness because nobody could watch someone like that, cry like that, for a reason like that and not feel sympathy.
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