Way Off Course

"What it comes down to is, I owe it to myself and to a lot of other people--my coaches, my family, my teammates--to take the athletic side of ski racing as far as I can."

-- Bode Miller, December 2004

"Measuring success with a medal count is pretty f----- up."

-- Bode Miller, June 2005

Someday perhaps U.S. skier Bode Miller will reconcile the gap in logic between those two statements, and then just maybe he will regret what took place in the mountains west of Turin during the first 10 days of the 2006 Olympic Games. A surpassingly gifted athlete in the prime of his career, Miller skied four races--with the slalom still to come this Saturday--on the grandest stage in his sport and fared no better than fifth place. Worse yet, he seemed not to care. "I don't get disappointed," he said midway through his Olympic medal shutout. After a tie for sixth place in the giant slalom on Monday, Miller sat alone in his RV counting the days until nobody cared about him anymore.

Miller, 28, could learn from Norway's Kjetil Andr� Aamodt, 34, who won the Super G last Saturday, establishing Olympic career records for men's Alpine medals (eight) and golds (four). "It's a good life to be an Alpine skier," Aamodt said, explaining his passion and longevity. Or from Austria's Michaela Dorfmeister, 32, who wept in the snow following victories in the women's downhill and Super G, capping a brilliant 15-year career with her first Olympic gold medals. Or perhaps from France's Carole Montillet-Carles, 32, the 2002 gold medalist in the women's downhill, who fell hard on her goggles in a downhill training crash on Feb. 13 yet cherished the Games so deeply that she competed two days later with a face so swollen that her eyelids had to be taped open. "I could not have stayed in my room and watched the race," she said.

Miller could even take something from 21-year-old U.S. teammate Ted Ligety, who won the men's combined on Valentine's Day. "Gold medal," Ligety would say that night, shaking his head, humbled. "Pretty amazing, for sure."

Ligety, who will be among the favorites in the slalom, was the only medalist for the U.S. team through seven of the 10 Alpine events, far short of the eight-medal goal that ski team officials established long before the Games. As three-event washout Daron Rahlves, one of the most accomplished U.S. World Cup racers in history, said, "This sucks. Definitely a poor performance."

Former Olympian Chad Fleischer, a member of the U.S. Ski Team from 1992 to 2002, says that the poor showing by the Americans, Miller and Rahlves in particular, will have long-term ramifications. "Bode and Daron were marketed and hyped as the Dream Team," says Fleischer. "There was money and marketing behind them, and now it's just imploded--and that's a disaster for the U.S. Ski Team. There's sponsorship money at stake, and I guarantee you that fingers are going to be pointed, at the athletes who didn't perform or at the coaches or the leadership. But they will be pointed."

The U.S. women's fortunes suffered a blow when Lindsey Kildow (a solid medal contender in three of her five events) was injured in a nasty crash during downhill training on Feb. 13. Kildow, 21, continued to race despite a painful bruise in her left gluteal muscle. Her best finish through three events was a seventh place in Monday's Super G. Julia Mancuso, 21, has also come up short, with a seventh in the downhill and an 11th in the Super G. (Both have the slalom and giant slalom remaining.)