Bode Miller speaks at Kitzbuehel press conference

Bode Miller speaks at Kitzbuehel press conferenceBode Miller of Franconia, New Hampshire, is the top-ranked ski racer in the world. On January 20 he was in Kitzbuehel, Austria, where he spoke to journalists at a press conference arranged by Atomic skis. Miller was upset that that day’s training run hadn’t been used for creating the start list for Saturday’s race down on the Streif, the most prestigious and difficult downhill in the world. Miller also voiced his feelings about his own celebrity (he gave interviews for stories in Time, People and the L.A. Times in the last week). Miller has expressed frustration about that part of the sport before, but this year is the first time reporters have heard him regularly saying that the attention could drive him to retire.

Question: Were you upset that the final training run wasn’t used for seeding?
Miller: The FIS decides which rules they want to follow at different times. The rules aren’t the rules in FIS right now. They’re always changing and there’s always a lot of grey area. Today if this was a race it would stand, that’s the rules. The rules are if you run a certain percentage to the finish on a race or whatever then that race stands, the results stand. If you don’t run that number the race cannot stand, and then it’s thrown away…

I changed plans this morning and cut out on my slalom program to come back and run the training run to make sure I qualified to the right spot that I could race in. Guys are going up there typically to do that, they’re getting injured, they’re ending their season, and he’s going to take it and just not listen to rules and throw out the race anyway. Those are the kind of things that are really frustrating, and that actually have been going on quite a bit this year about it…

That’s the one thing that’s holding our sport back. Professionalism. In other sports rules are the rules and they stick to them. Our sport is like a club sport because the rules are serious and they aren’t taken seriously and that means the athletes aren’t taken that seriously…

If it had not been a qualifying run for tomorrow, I wouldn’t have run it. It’s risky. Anytime you run this course, whether the visibility is perfect or whether it’s not, it’s just dangerous course. I didn’t need to have anything else to figure out with the course necessarily. And I could have used the rest and I could have used more slalom training. So I definitely would have not run it…

It was scheduled. It’s a dangerous sport so you’re always going to have crashes and things here. It’s just the way it is. You never get away in our sport without any serious crashes whether visibility is perfect or not.

It is dangerous to have three training runs in a row because the guys are all tired and fatigued but also as you start to run the course more and more, you start to push the line more and more, and you start trying to do things and fix the mistakes. That leads to more speed, and you take more speed into the sections where you didn’t have as much speed the day before and you make different mistakes. I don’t think the danger is an issue. If you schedule a training run and the weather is possible to run a training run then you run the training run. You get to a point where the training run should count then the training run should count…

Question: Is Kitzbuehel something special to you?
Miller: I wouldn’t say it’s anything really that special. But it’s just a great hill. The hill is challenging, it’s really a pleasure to run it whether like I said its dangerous but it’s also really challenging. It’s good to have big crowds sometimes, but for me it’s really not that great to have a big crowd because I have to deal with it all the time and a lot of the other racers don’t have to deal with that side of it nearly as much as I do. I don’t mind it when there’s no people at a race, but I do understand that it’s great for the sport, this venue is our biggest crowd all year so. They do know how to put on a great race here.

Question: Winning here would be special for you?
Miller: Winning any World Cup is exactly worth the same amount as far as World Cup points go. They’re all 100 points if you win. As far as putting down a good race, I like to put down a good race no matter where I am. It doesn’t matter if its a FIS race or a World Cup. The good thing about this place, the challenging part, is how tough it is and how good you have to ski, how well you have to perform to win.

Question: How much energy do you need for training, for competition and for all the rest, the media work, the fans and the people?
Miller: About 47. 47 energy.

Question: Are you saying that for you personally it really doesn’t make any difference if you are the Westendorf winner or the Kitzbuehel winner?
Miller: No, I mean it depends on the course and the conditions and the performance. Obviously Kitzbuehel is a tougher hill and there’s a lot more to it. But the skiing itself it doesn’t make any difference where it takes place necessarily. Like I said, different environments bring out different parts of the skiing. So you can’t have the best race of your life on a 10-second long hill that’s flat. You need a challenging venue and the atmosphere that surrounds that.

Question: But winning the Hahnenkamm combined last year didn’t have an effect on your life?
Miller: It made me have to give more interviews.

Question: How do you find peace? You don’t like crowds very much.
Miller: No, I don’t. I don’t think anybody likes big crowds unless they’re able to participate in the crowd. If you’re excluded from the crowd, like I am, it’s not fun even to go out and party. It’s not fun to not be able to participate. With the hotels and the motorhome, it’s possible to find a little space, but certain areas of my life are taken away by fans and media. That’s part of the way it is. It’s tough, it’s frustrating, but it’s reality. The motorhome has been an amazing improvement. It keeps things balanced.

Question: Would the interviews and so on affect how many years you race?
Miller: Yeah, that would be why I would do it. I won’t stop loving ski racing, ever. Even when I’m not winning. It’s just more of a challenge. It’s actually great. [Paul] Accola doesn’t like ski racing any less now than he did five or ten years ago. It’s a great sport. You get to spend your time outside. In some ways, I bet he likes it more. He doesn’t have to do interviews anymore. If you watch Accola, he gets to walk right through the crowd after a training run. I watched him this morning. I was going up for my run, and he was on his way down. He walks right through and people say ‘hi’ or ‘good job’ or ‘good luck.’ He walks straight through with his skis on his shoulder. I can’t even carry my own skis. I have to ditch my skis and my boots so that I can sign things all the time. The crowd doesn’t get any smaller. I can sign for an hour if I want to, and one leaves, and three more come. By the end, I’d have to go straight from the hill to the press conference… I think it’s important for everybody to understand that my job is not to be a celebrity. That’s not my job. You have a choice of what your job is, and my job is ski racing. I’m a ski racer. You can define that how you want, but the reality is that the job of being a ski racer doesn’t change. If you’re a journalist in high school, your job is to write stories and articles and that’s it. If your job is at Time Magazine, or any European newspapers, you’re a journalist. Ski racing is the same whether you’re 12 years old or 18 years old or 27 years old. The job is definted on the ski hill when you’re racing. This is not my job. This is fringe stuff that comes along with being a celebrity.

Question: Give us a picture of what it’s like. Is it a crazy circus?
Miller: No it’s not. It just doesn’t stop. There’s no pause. There’s no break ever. It’s not exciting. When I ski race it’s exciting. Lots of great things happen. When I train it’s exciting. This stuff here is not inspirational at all. It goes up and down. There’s times when it’s more, and less. There’s only so much to talk about. Reporters have an amazing ability to repeat things over and over again. Repetitive questions. Repetitive actions. At some point, they know the answers, and know what’s there. At least it’s at the point where people aren’t always asking about the outhouse and the no electricity, the way it used to be. There’s not that much more to talk about that’s interesting, at least not in the perspective of easy, 100 or 200 words type of journalism. The good, inspirational and fun ideas and things to talk about don’t go onto paper in 1000 words and make sense. It takes 500 pages. And that’s not what you guys do. I don’t blame anybody. I’m friends with most of the journalists. I think the idea is great. You have to bring the sport to the people. That’s admirable. It’s not a shortcoming on anyone’s part. It’s just the situation. I get stuff like, ‘you hate Austrians’ and ‘you hate Swiss.’ Individual fans are great. If it’s one fan, I’ll do anything for them. But when there are 5,000 fans, you can’t do everything. So you have to draw the line. That line is always being pushed. They don’t want you to draw that line. Wherever you put it, they push it. It gets frustrating. Everyone wants a little piece, and at some point there’s nothing to give. Nobody gives anything back either. There’s very little reciporacal action. It’s all take. Even with journalists.

Question: There’s no presents.
Miller: Nope. There are no presents.