COMMENTARY

By Sally Jenkins

Columnist

updated 12:07 p.m. ET Feb. 26, 2006

Sally Jenkins Columnist

SESTRIERE, Italy - For weeks now Nike has advised us to “Join Bode.” Join him where? At the bar? That’s one place you might find Bode Miller after the Turin Games, unless he’s in his motor home, finding new ways to duck all that pressure he put on himself.

Miller is the biggest disappointment in the Winter Olympics, not because of the way he skied the mountain, but the way he acted at the bottom of it. The fact that he didn’t win a medal at these Games, going 0-for-5 in the Alpine events, is beside the point. It’s not the winning, it’s the trying. The point is that he acted like he didn’t try, and didn’t care. Failing is forgivable. Getting fatter on beer while you’re here is not.

If there has been a weaker performance by an American athlete on the international stage than that of Miller, I’m hard pressed to think of one. To hear Miller tell it, he spent more time in Sestriere’s nightclubs than he did in actual competition, which amounted to less than eight minutes. Miller’s final Olympic event, the slalom, lasted all of 16 seconds. He bulled out of the start house, did a couple of quick scrimshaw turns, and promptly straddled a gate.

Fair enough — Miller has struggled in the slalom this season, finishing just two of eight races, and it was a tough course. Nine of the top 29 skiers in the competition did not finish. It was Miller’s behavior afterwards that sealed his reputation as the goat of the games. He thrust his hands in the air, stuck out his tongue, and waggled in mock celebration. Then he skied off the course, avoiding the cameras and throngs of people at the bottom of the hill. When Associated Press reporter Jim Litke found him later, he declared, “Man, I rocked.”

Olympics coverage

Then he delivered a disquisition on his Olympic experience. “It’s been an awesome two weeks,” Miller said. “I got to party and socialize at an Olympic level.”

Let’s review his awesome two weeks. Miller arrived in Turin sullen and defensive, and blew his chance in the downhill when he lost time on the bottom of course, probably as a result of his lack of fitness. He blew another medal in the combined when he led after the downhill portion, but straddled a gate in the slalom. Next, he blew up a gate in the Super-G, and then insulted his rivals afterward by saying he wasn’t one of those guys “who skies 70 or 80 percent and gets on the podium.”

WINTER OLYMPICS More on Bode Miller Miller fails to finish slalom, denied any medals Vote: What do you think of Miller’s Olympics? WP: Ski? Bode was busier getting fat on beer Commentary: Bode says ‘I did it my way’   Slide show: Photos from Bode’s bad Games Commentary: Miller lives life on his terms MORE ON ALPINE SKIING

Miller has worked awfully hard to reach this point; the relationship he has built with the public is the one he himself has constructed over many months. He was impossibly over-hyped coming into the Winter Games between Nike’s ad campaign, his autobiography, and those nipple-baring magazine covers, all of which he cooperated with and cashed in on. Miller took the world’s biggest ego bath — until he realized it was going to be difficult to satisfy Olympic expectations, especially in a field chock full of Austrians.

Now he wants to distance himself from all the hype and commerce. “The expectations were other people’s,” he told AP. “I’m comfortable with what I’ve accomplished, including at the Olympics.”

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