Miller time for a reluctant poster boy

BODE MILLER wanted out. He felt trapped, like he was being forced to be something he had never asked to be: an All-American poster boy, a bang on the drum, red, white and blue, God Bless America branded piece of Olympic propaganda.

That was not Miller. He was not a guy looking to land on a cereal box. If anything, he was an anti-poster boy – a Bart Simpson on two planks – a wild kid from the New Hampshire woods searching for a perfect line down a mountainside, and just yearning to be free. There was all that, plus Miller liked to stay out late and party. Life, for Bode, was about having a good time.

In the Book of Bode, Olympic medals did not matter much. Winning was just the result, and the true joy – the adrenaline rush – was in the act of getting across the line. And by the time Miller got to Turin in 2006 he felt like a man in chains, a prisoner of all the hype, and the country vs. country podium lust that attends every Olympics.