I thought, the last time I knew, that Cafe Society didn’t want sports threads here. Has there been a chance of heart?
I am pleased Bode didn’t win squat. It is his fault that NBC ran him constantly. Just when they would start to ignore him, he’d make another asinine comment to get the attention back his way.
I would rather have seen the Al Qayda representative win a medal than see my own countryman in this case.
Back to the bunny slopes, Bode!
That’s a mighty big assumption. Maybe he’s just a loudmouth who doesn’t think before he speaks rather than a conniving attention seeker.
We decided a little while back that sports threads do belong in Cafe Society (being an entertainment and leisure activity). This isn’t to say that an inclusion of anything sporty automatically puts it in Cafe Society, however. To quote Dex:
Since this particular thread was focused, albeit negatively, on a sports supahstar, I booted it over here.
It seems very likely that less partying may have left him with sufficient “edge” to win a medal or three. I watched him lose steam in the latter parts of some runs; At the finish lines he was seriously sucking wind.
Olympic athletes have a responsibility to represent their countries to the best of their abilities. Partying late the night before a competition is irresponsible. In a perfect world, that slot on the U.S. Ski Team would’ve gone to someone who would take it seriously.
Thanks for the explanation, and your patience, SkipMagic. I’m a little out of touch. Cheers! 
Bode’s problem is he does not communicate his ideas well so he comes across as a lazy, partying, doesn’t care, ski bum.
Skiing is like golf, there are no sure things. Tiger Woods does not win every tournament he enters. Dominant golfers only win a handful of starts during the year. But they normally finish high in the standings.
A dominant skier may only win a handful of eventw during the year. The current world cup leader in men’s slalom has not won a race all year. If you read the REALISTIC projections for the games, he did not do as badly as it seems. Before the games for instance, SI had Bode projected to recieve only one medal. In the combined that he was leading before he hooked a gate with a ski tip and was DQed. Bode was top ten in evey event that he finished at the olympics.
We as a nation have short memories. It wasn’t all that long ago that Americans were only also rans in Alpine skiing. For the first time ever we were expected to challenge the Austrian skiers. But the pre olympic hype always gets too big. And our team can never live up to it. Look at poor Chad Hedrick, he wins three spped skating medals at these games and is reported as a failure because he didn’t win five gold medals. He has done something that only two other americans have done in the past (3 or more medals in a single games) and his realults are “disappointing?” No wonder the ratings are poor for the Olympics. They can never live up to the hype. If that is “disappointing” then we will never have a “good” result.
Bode is right, it is about the competition, not the medals. He just does not communicate it well.
Sure. But in the imperfect world, you go to the Olympics with the people who want to go to the Olympics (and make the qualifiers), and you take your chances at what is those individuals’ motivation for wanting it. And meanwhile USOC’s and IOC’s motivation, for all the talk about patriotism or the ideals of Sport, is to keep those endorsement/royalties dollars and euros rolling in…
I assume you mean at the *Winter * Games.
Looking at Revedge’s post, yes, I must agree that the hype in American media goes beyond “our athletes have to represent the country to the best of their abilities” and instead becomes “our athletes had better kick the world’s ass hands down or else they’re just bums”.
I really got the impression that he didn’t care from the coverage before the run where he straddled the gate. The announcers said that the athletes had been given an hour to examine the track before their runs, but Bode left after only twenty minutes. When he straddled the gate, I thought “Guess you didn’t look at that one carefully enough, huh?”
IMHO he’s a complete shiite, who had the ability to achieve everything olympic in his sport, but chose instead to dick around and not show up. He had the choice to make lots of money and win, or make lots of money and lose. He chose the latter, and I do mean CHOSE, the sorry bastid.
I trend to agree. And as was mentioned, he doesn’t communicate well.
What I’d like to know is why didn’t the U.S. ski federation understand this? They had such amazingly unrealistic expectations coming into the games. Where the hell did they expect 8 medals to come from? 8 medals is the absolute best case scenario, when everything breaks your way.
Oh, and isn’t backlash to hype just as bad as buying into the hype? You’re still letting the hype affect your opinion.
You think I get *paid * for iconoclasty? Hell, it isn’t usually even appreciated.
Here it is, then: He could have partied all he wanted to without even bothering with qualifying for the Olympics. He didn’t even need to ski. Anybody could have. He can keep doing it his whole life, too - but never with that aura that a winner, an achiever, a gold medalist has, that aura that attracts chicks and sponsors and free beer among other things. The world is jammed with people saying “I could have done this or that, I was almost a winner”, but there’s only a rare few for whom that’s really true, and he’s one of those extra special losers who can’t even blame bad luck. He just screwed off and screwed up. He even took a chance away from somebody who might have been able to use it. He’ll probably realize someday what he could have had and threw away instead, but for now, no, he doesn’t have a clue.
Lissa, he blew off the downhill inspection run, too, so he could sleep off what he did the night before.
Corporate America and the media needed superstars and Bode fit the bill nicely. Everybody cashed in on the invincibility myth: Bode, Nike, Time, Newsweek, 60 Minutes, the list goes on and on. I think Bode soon found himself surrounded by a windstorm of impossible expectations and just rode the storm out–without medaling. I chalk up part of his cavelier attitude to pure face saving. A commentator last night faulted him for arriving at the Games a bit overweight and not conditioned.
What gripes me though is the media turned him into a cash cow and then, when he inevitably disappointed, they made millions more crucifying him for shattering their myth. The notion that he could have grabbed 3, 4, 5 golds if only he had applied himself is nonsense.
As a former alpine skier and coach, I’d like to add a few things here. For one, most of this has been just a media circus, fueled by reporters that don’t understand alpine skiing. For example, I’ve seen it everywhere- “Bode was DQd” oh my god! Wait, no, this happens all the time. For example, here’s the complete DNF/DQ list for the men’s slalom:
It’s simply a fact of life that people will be disqualified or will DNF from ski races, especially in the slalom. The first course was tough, as the above quote bears out. Also, it’s the freakin’ Winter Olympics. You’d better be going 100%, because all your competitors will be. A consequence of going 100%, especially for someone who skis like Bode Miller is that you’re also at a high risk of screwing up. So basically, he was going for it and he either would have skied very fast or blown out. He was going for the gold, and I personally can’t fault him for that. It’s not like the World Cup where you can throttle back a little, get a good finish and some points for next time.
In the same vein is the inspection non-sense. How long somebody inspects the course is purely personal. We had the same amount of course inspection time when I raced. I typically only used about 20 minutes or so and used the extra time to warm up or work on my skis. There were other people that would use all the inspection time allowed. It’s just a matter of what works for you. In regards to him skipping the downhill inspection- that’s a very different matter than the slalom/GS inspection. He’d already skied the downhill course several times in the training. This wasn’t a new set and the course hadn’t changed.
I also think a big part of the blame goes to the USSA/U.S. Ski Team. They have probably the worst track record of managing athletes of any sports federation going. I bring this up because he’s been roundly criticized in the press for staying in a motor home instead of with the team. It’s pretty much a right of passage for a successful American skier to split with the U.S. Ski Team. Nearly every succesful skier in the last 15 years has done so, including Kristina Koznick, Bode Miller, and Daron Rahlves. Bode actually had his breakout World Cup season when he stopped travelling with the team and started living in Austria.
So, while he probably should have done a better job of keeping his mouth shut in the run-up to the Olympics, most of the criticism he’s getting is misguided at best.
I respectfully disagree with your choice of words here. Winning or losing a competition isn’t really a ‘choice’; you don’t ‘choose’ to win a competition. You try, and you either win or lose.
Unless you choose to just not try hard (or at all), there really isn’t much of a choice involved.
I believe that last line is what was meant. Miller obviously didn’t do as much as he could have to win, and now he’ll always be The Guy Who Pissed It Away - even in the party scene.
They’re experts at making money from any situation.
The whole thing reminds me of the “Andy Roddick’s mojo” thing from last year, although this was on a much grander scale. These companies seem to take it for granted that some American is absolutely guaranteed to become a superstar at each Olympiad, and it sure wasn’t the case this year.