Bode Short on Believers

Bode short on believers

BY WAYNE COFFEY
New York Daily News
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

SESTRIERE, Italy - The hippie parents, the backwoods upbringing, the
New Hampshire cabin without electricity or plumbing - they are all part
of the lore surrounding America's best-known skier. But if Bode Miller
isn't careful, says a well-regarded international Alpine skiing
official, he may become best known for his underachievement.
"He could do a lot more with his talent, that's for sure," said Max
Gartner, 47, who is Canada's top Alpine skiing official and has spent
more than two decades working and coaching with the Canadian national
ski team. "We've already seen that if he's dedicated and committed he
could be the ultimate dominant athlete out there."

Miller heads to an Olympic Alpine start house for the fourth time this
morning, at the top of Mt. Sises, some 8,100 feet above sea level, for
the first of the two runs of the giant slalom. It is an event in which
he captured silver four years ago - and won the world championship
three years ago.

The cover boy of these Games heading in, the mercurial Miller is 60%
through his competition schedule and has been even more confounding
than usual. He was the best all-around skier on the planet last year,
and has a fifth-place finish in the downhill, as well as two DNFs, at
these Games. In the combined, he won the downhill portion and was
cruising toward a gold when he straddled a gate and was disqualified.
In Saturday's Super G, he led by 0.22 seconds through the first
interval, then clipped a gate and was spared a wipeout only by his
dazzling athleticism.

Again, he did not finish.

Through it all, late-night Miller sightings around Sestriere have been
a subject of daily musings around the mountain village. The night of
his combined slip-up, he was photographed in a bar cavorting with Tina
Jordan, a former Playmate. Miller has never been one to hide his
partying ways - witness his now-infamous "60 Minutes" interview and his
skiing "wasted" comment - and has been equally forthright about not
skiing to win, or to meet others' expectations, but for the personal
rush of taking on a mountain. Still, ski-circuit insiders - within the
U.S. team and outside of it - believe his inattention to training and
fitness is catching up to him.

"I definitely think he hasn't trained as hard as he should have and as
hard as he can," said Gartner, whose wife, Kerrin-Lee Gartner, was the
upset winner of the Olympic women's downhill in Albertville in 1992.
"He's relying on his natural ability, and thinks he can get away with
all stuff, not preparing properly. But even though his capabilities as
an athlete are unbelievable, it's maybe not quite good enough to carry
him through.

"He hasn't been in the same form as last year. The World Cup is a good
indication of the type of shape and form you are in, and he's just not
the same."

While Miller is third in the overall World Cup rankings, the high place
is more a function of the frequency of his racing than the level of his
results. He has one victory - at a giant slalom in Beaver Creek, Colo.
- and just six podium finishes. A four-time world champion who used to
excel in slaloms, he has finished only two of seven slalom races this
season - and is ranked No.35 in the world in that discipline.

For his part, U.S. skiing coach Phil McNichol has said that Miller has
done some of his best skiing of the season at these Games, only to be
undone by a few untimely mistakes. Bill Marolt, executive director of
U.S. Skiing, declined yesterday to discuss Miller's performance, or his
nocturnal habits.

"I'm not going to react in the middle of the Olympics," Marolt said. "I
don't have anything to say."

Said Gartner, "It's hard for the U.S. leaders and coaches to manage
him. He's very unmanageable. I don't think he listens. It must be
frustrating for his sponsors and suppliers to watch this, because
that's not how you want your athletes to prepare."

Gartner believes what has happened to Miller is good for the sport,
because it shows the importance of hard work, talent notwithstanding.

"If your top skier is getting by and winning even though he's staying
out until three or four in the morning and not preparing, it's hard to
convince the younger guys that they need to be disciplined and work
hard," Gartner said.

For all his issues with Miller's commitment to the sport, Gartner said
Miller is "one of those guys you never know with," and he wouldn't be
shocked to see Miller go out and pull off a medal-winning performance
today - even with the mounting pressure to right himself and live up to
all the magazine covers.

"He has the natural ability and speed to go as fast as anybody,"
Gartner said.