The Bode Miller Blues

Great commentary by Mike Celizic on why Bode Miller has blown his chance at greatness during the 2006 Turin Olympics.

It wasn’t the beer before the downhill or his hell-bent-for-leather style in the combined slalom that did in Bode Miller. It was all the beers in all the months leading up to the Olympics and all the years of living his life as recklessly as he skis his races.

You don’t get many chances in life to climb to the pinnacle of your business. For Olympic athletes, three cycles is usually the max, and one of those is when you’re young and brash, one is when maturity should compliment talent and the final one is when you’re riding on experience and conditioning.

Was Miller over-hyped as being America’s best shot at gold? You betcha, and even Celizic admits the media is partially to blame:

It takes years of training and dedication to win an Olympic gold medal. It doesn’t take nearly as many years of taking yourself and your talent for granted to lose it.

Blame all of us in the media for some of this. It has been evident all year that Miller was not the same skier this year that he was last when he won the World Cup, skiing’s equivalent of NASCAR’s Nextel Cup. We kept writing about him as if a return to form was just around the corner.

Silly us. The reality is clear now that Miller took his talent for granted for too long. Last summer especially, when he should have been getting himself into supreme shape for the biggest skiing meet he’d ever be in, he partied instead. It had always been there for him. It would be there again.

Will Bode win gold? Perhaps. But unfortunately more attention has been paid to what has come out of his mouth rather than what he has done on the slope.

At least Ted Ligety picked up the slack and the gold.

Read the whole Miller article here.