All the skiing specialists and technicians will tell you that Bode Miller is a skier unlike any other. Always at the limit, this native of Franconia has an inimitable and spectacular style. Aerial and sometimes uncoordinated, he gives the impression of taking each turn wrong, but manages to recover miraculously and then to go very, very fast! He won his first races on the circuit in 2002, making him the incarnation of what the American team had been waiting for since the exploits of the Mahre brothers, Steve and Phil, in 1983. For this man who had grown up on a farm with no water or electricity, the weight of history did not count. He was guided only by the pleasure of doing what he loved. Bode is an acrobat, always looking for a perfect line.
An exceptional skier, he has won races in all the Alpine skiing events, from slalom to downhill. Only a handful of skiers have achieved this feat in the past. The American is capable of the best and of the worst. The best – like two silver medals at the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City in 2002, 32 World Cup victories and four World Championship titles. The worst – like his repeated crashes or his medal-free return from Turin despite being the hot favourite. The double winner of the Alpine skiing World Cup is an atypical character, like when, between 2007 and 2009, he put the American team to one side to spend the season in Europe in a camping car surrounded by his own staff.
At the Vancouver Games, Miller seemed serene, and it paid off. It should be mentioned that he was participating in the Olympic Games for the fourth time, 12 years after the Nagano Games which ended for him with two crashes, in the slalom and giant slalom. On the Whistler snow, he first finished in third place in the downhill, winning the bronze medal, and then he went one better, winning silver in the Super G. Two days later, he relished his first Olympic title in the super combined. A medal of every metal crown the extraordinary talent of this fantastic skier who is sometimes criticised and often hero-worshipped.