Word: millers
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...that Miller, 28, was groomed for leading a movement. As a kid, he spent lots of time by himself, wandering the woods near his home. He didn't watch television because there wasn't one, which is generally coincident with not having electricity. That lifestyle was a choice made by his parents. His father Woody, a med-school dropout with no thirst for the professional life, found happiness working in the outdoors at a variety of hardscrabble jobs. His mother Jo worked at her father's sports camp. Miller has two sisters and one brother...
...Miller's prowess as a skier and his reputation as a hard nut were already known in the area when he was offered a spot in Carrabassett Valley Academy, a prep school in Maine for ski racers. But coaches there couldn't tame him. They kept trying to alter his so-called back-seat style, and he resisted fiercely. If you want to ski on your ass, they finally told him, become a snowboarder. In his book, Bode: Go Fast, Be Good, Have Fun, he claims that another local coach even sabotaged his chance for the junior Olympic team. Then...
...point in his career, Miller's slalom-racing results could be summed up in three letters, DNF, as in did not finish. He seemed determined to either win or crash. But not from recklessness. He was in the process of changing his tactics. Simply trying to go faster wasn't working: correcting errors was harder, equipment didn't work as well. Instead, he figured that the quickest route down the mountain was the shortest route between gates. And that required deep analysis. "I needed to learn how to change directions and generate force that was different from other guys...
...Similarly, Miller has his own ideas about training that have clashed with his coaches'. The USSA, like most sports federations, uses standard testing to evaluate athletes. That, says Miller, causes athletes to train for the test, not the sport. He believes that ski racing requires a different approach to fitness. "My team has been very unreceptive about the fact that I consistently show them that I train slightly differently than they do, that I consistently show them that I am in better shape for ski racing than anyone else on the team," he points out. And why wouldn...
...boots, he discovered that inserting a composite - as opposed to aluminum or plastic - lift under the sole gave him a better feel on the snow and better performance. Then he did something really crazy: he shared the information with everyone, including competitors. His equipment team flipped, but in the Miller school of philosophy this makes complete sense. Otherwise, he says, "I'm maintaining an unfair advantage over my competitors knowingly, for the purpose of beating them alone. Not for the purpose of enjoying it more or skiing better. To me that's ethically unsound." (See 25 winter Olympic athletes...