Make Way For The Gate Crasher

By Bill Saporito/Lake Placid

The word from Bode Miller's coach this year is that Miller has finally matured as a ski racer. Found the brake pedal. The guy was always as fast as an avalanche, but just as wild. He would occasionally show up on the winners' podium, but that seemed purely accidental. The rest of the time Bullet Bode (it's pronounced Bo-dee) would be so far off the course you would need a GPS to find him. This season, though, Miller has been a fixture on the winners' stand of the World Cup tour, Europe's glamorous winter circuit. He has won four races outright, something an American hasn't done in almost two decades. At Salt Lake City he will be a medal contender in the slalom, giant slalom and combined (downhill and slalom) events, "the variety pack," as he calls it.

But maturity? No way, says Miller, 24, who proved it a couple of months ago by running his car into a tree. Oh, he wasn't in it. Uh-oh, no one was--Miller started the car, in gear, without getting in. Besides, he says, "I'm skiing really similar to the way I've been skiing for the past five years. I still crash out of races."

The difference this year is that Miller knows he's faster than anyone else running slalom gates; it's just a question of how fast he needs to be to win. So he has learned how to better manage that tiny margin of error that separates world beaters from snow eaters. "He doesn't have to go all out every run," explains Tommy Moe, who won the downhill in 1994. "When you get that confident, it's really easy to ski fast."

Miller is the triple-threat leader of a U.S. ski team that is crucial to the U.S. Olympic Committee's goal of winning a record 20 medals in these Games. (The tally from Nagano in 1998: 13.) In freestyle skiing's mogul and aerial events--bumps and jumps--wild man Jonny Moseley and the meticulous Eric Bergoust will be defending their respective titles. The mogul team is impressively deep. The women's bumpers, led by Hannah Hardaway and Shannon Bahrke, could sweep, or be swept, in an amazingly talented field led by Norway's Kari Traa. Overall, nothing less than a perfect run will win. That means big "airs," such as helicopters and other spectacular jumps. Moseley is working on one he calls the "dinner roll." Says moguls head coach Don St. Pierre: "It looks pretty hairy. The fact that he skis away is going to impress the crowd."

In the "technical" events--slalom and giant slalom--Kristina Koznick, the prodigal child of the women's team, is returning home in great form. And Picabo Street has once again been surgically reassembled to contest the downhill. One more sensational crash, though, and she will have to be sold for parts.

Bergoust, a.k.a. Air Bergy, the defending gold medalist in aerial skiing, sees these Games as a huge opportunity for his sport to "transcend skiing." Says he: "An aerials event in sunny blue sky is the most beautiful thing." Aerials tickets sold out before the downhill tickets, and competition will take place in front of some 13,000 fans in a festive atmosphere at Deer Valley.

Don't expect Bergy to join the party. Although most athletes are focused, Bergy, 32, is the head abbot in the order of aerialists, absolutely devoted to what he does, in minute detail. "I thought a lot about every aspect of this sport--the physics, the techniques, the jumps we were using," he says. That's not a bad idea when you are skiing off a 70[degree] incline at 45 m.p.h. and doing three flips with four twists before landing.

For all the bravura of aerials, Miller may prove that when it comes to the Olympics, speed still thrills. Certainly Europe hasn't lost its "hup, hup, hup" for slalom. Two weeks ago in Schladming, Austria, for instance, Miller won a World Cup slalom in front of a roaring crowd of 50,000. "Everyone's talking about him," says U.S. technical coach Jesse Hunt. "They know him by his first name," as if he were a soccer star.

That fame comes as no surprise to the people who have followed Miller. By the time he got to Carrabbassett Valley Academy (C.V.A.), a ski-racer prep school, his athleticism was evident but his style was wildly unorthodox.

That might have something to do with his carefully uncontrolled childhood. The Millers chose to live slightly off the grid in Franconia, N.H., in what Bode calls an "awesome" cabin. It had no plumbing or electricity and was miles from any road. His parents "are both of the minimalist mentality, where less is more," says Miller. Young Bode spent summers building his athletic ability at his grandfather's tennis camp at Tamarack Camp, also in Franconia.

That ability was so exceptional that the ski coach didn't try to change his wild-man style. "He would look out of control, but a lot of this was by design," says John Ritzo, C.V.A.'s headmaster. "He had the athletic ability to get away with it. Most people couldn't recover from positions that he got into."

At the same time, Miller was extremely analytical, breaking down each race and figuring out how to go faster in each segment. That led him to a new technology called shaped skis, which made turning easier for average skiers. Racers had dismissed the innovation, but Miller realized that shaped skis would let him carry more speed into the turns. Eventually, all the pros switched to shaped skis.

Miller says he has got a grip on other variables in skiing as well. "It's not about controlling aggression; it's about getting everything else in the right line," he explains, meaning things like equipment, fitness (he blew out a knee last season) and start position--the higher the better, and the better you ski, the higher the start position you get. "There are people who can make a mistake and stay on the course and finish 15th," he says. Why bother? "For me and a lot of the other top guys, we don't make those kinds of mistakes anymore."

In December he won a giant-slalom event in Val d'Isere, France, and then drove seven hours to Madonna di Campiglio, Italy, the next day and won a slalom event. No other American had won two events in a row since Phil Mahre in 1983. Then, in early January in Adelboden, Switzerland, Miller won a race by nearly 2 sec. It's an astonishing margin, like winning by 20 m in a 100-m dash. He has been on the winners' podium eight times this season, compared with three last season.

Miller is absolutely unawed at being a favorite going into the Olympics. He has already beaten the best skiers in the world on their home courses, and now he's heading for his. "We know who has the speed and who doesn't," he points out. "This isn't going to be won by someone who skis a conservative, smart race. It's going to be won by someone who skis as hard as he can go." Does that sound like the voice of maturity?