The Miller's Tale

Well, Bode Miller blew his last ski race, not even finishing. And after listening to his comments on the fact that he won no medals of any kind and only finished two out of five races, you'd think he treated the Olympics as one big joke - when that's obviously my job! :-D Alas, the joke is really on him.

Miller told several interviewers that expectations were raised too high, and that he only came to the Olympics to ski hard and have a good time. Medals? No, he didn't care about medals. And if you saw him ski at Torino these past two weeks, he obviously meant it.

Pardon me for asking, but if Olympic medals are bunk, why bother competing for them? Apolo Anton Ohno, one of the most respected winter athletes in recent memory, gave his all in short track speed skating to win a personal gold medal and then gave 150 percent just to give his relay team a medal - and it was a lousy bronze! But a bronze medal for a short track relay team that usually gets kept off the podium clearly meant something. Did you see Sasha Cohen turn a potentially disastrous long skate program into a silver medal? And Michelle Kwan certainly didn't go to Torino for the pasta; she wanted a gold medal, man! She wanted it so badly, she was literally ready to bust a gut to get it!

Miller could have skied anywhere for a good time. He might have had a better time in St. Moritz, because that's arguably a posher place than Torino, and there he could have gotten wasted in real style. At least outside of the Olympics - indeed, outside of any ski meet - his lack of focus and his lackadaisical preparation wouldn't have mattered to anyone. Sure, the most important thing in the Olympics may be not to win but to take part, but Miller didn't even treat his participation with any importance!

Miller told NBC's Tom Brokaw that he "might go" to Vancouver to take part in the 2010 Winter Olympics. Bode? Please don't! Because you won't actually "compete," you'll get bombed and slide down the hill and embarrass everyone all over again before you come to in 2011 and forget the whole thing! You want to be an Olympian again? Move to the capital city of Washington State!

Commenting on NBC last night, Bob Costas noted the apparent inconsistency between Miller's statements and his actions. He doesn't like the media, but had no problem granting interviews to magazines and television news programs. Miller professes to disdain commercialism, then turns around and does self-gratifying Nike ads urging folks to visit his Nike-sponsored Web site, where he admits that he doesn't care much about winning - as if his appearances at five different Olympic skiing events didn't make that clear already. Costas concluded that if Bode Miller stops caring about being a champion skier, others will stop caring about him.

I've stopped caring already.