- Skiing was the only objective,
solo sport that I could find that I really loved.
I could look terrible, I could do whatever I wanted,
and as long as I was the fastest,
nobody got to tell me I was 3rd place or 5th place.
(upbeat music)
- [Announcer] Bode miller is really flyin'.
- Self-assured, confident,
and one-zone abilities or character.
(upbeat music)
I made the U.S. Ski Team right out
of high school, so when I was 18.
I got one start in the beginning of that 97-98 season
in Park City, Utah, and I started second to last in the race
and skied true to who I was at that time,
and ended up qualifying, you know,
finished 23rd the first run, which was a shock,
and I had to deal with our CEO at the time
and the older racers just going into complete panic.
You know, telling me to just like snowplow
down the second run, make sure I finished
because they all thought I was
gonna crash in the second run.
And I went out and skied absolutely insane the second run,
and finished 11th in my first World Cup race.
It set a tone, I think it was important
for everyone else to see the way that I dealt with pressure
and the way that I wanted to be as a ski-racer.
- [Announcer] Now watch this man,
he has perhaps the most unorthodox style and technique.
(upbeat music)
- I think my technique was always the weak spot.
Ya know in ski-racing, technique only matters
in terms of how it affects your
ability to navigate the course.
- [Announcer] And here comes Bode Miller.
Looking for victory number two on the World Cup Tour!
Bode Miller!
- I was sacrificing, basically being able
to look a certain way or maintain certain body positions
because I was trying to go faster
and I thought that was a pretty obvious trade off.
To maintain an edge I would get rotated,
my hands, my arms flailed around a lot,
because just like you'd see somebody on a tight rope,
or a balance beam or anything else,
you know, you use your arms for balance.
I won the overall in 2005 and I won eight races
and it was the year that propelled me
to the very front of World Cup.
I'd already been the guy, I'd been you know,
taking most the media pressure and heat
for years before that but that
was where it really kinda got narrow at the top.
- [Announcer] Well here's Bode making
his usual exit avoiding the media.
The media had worn on me a lot at that point,
I didn't have the right skills
to be able to process things real time.
(announcers yelling)
- [Announcer] Oh no, and Bode miller is down!
- I would say that was the low point in my whole career.
The more you're in the top,
the more you're in the spotlight, the harder
it is to maintain you know that
self-assured, self-reliant system.
It just, you get pressure from everywhere
and you get crushed by your emotions and all that stuff.
And that was certainly a point
where with all that pressure, I had to look inside
and had to figure out how I was gonna deal with it,
cuz it wasn't gonna go away on it's own.
(upbeat music)
I felt like I was on a train and that,
you know I was the engine of the train maybe,
or maybe I was the caboose and there was just
all this mass going along with me, and the momentum
was so strong that I just needed to get off.
Away from it, I realized that there was still stuff
that I had to offer and things that I wanted to accomplish.
(airy music)
I decided I was gonna go for the 2010 Olympics.
(upbeat music)
If you look at my slalom performances leading up to that,
I'd been crashing all the time,
my slalom was garbage at the time, my skis were terrible.
In that slalom, it was more like a reflecting back
on that very first World Cup I'd had 13 years earlier,
and that was the same approach.
It was like look, here's what I have to do to
this is the moment, I needed to go absolutely 100 percent
and take huge risk and make sure I executed.
When I came across the line, it
was another sort of moment like that first World Cup
where I was like, "Yep, that's it".
- [Announcer] Bode Miller has the gold!
- That's why I'm able to do it,
is because at that moment I focus on nothing else, but that.
(upbeat music)
I think being self-assured in my career
was ultimately one of the most
important pieces of the puzzle.
(upbeat music)