Everybody's down on Bode Miller. He didn't win a single medal at the Torino games. What a loser! He skis drunk. He's arrogant. He doesn't care enough. Bode Miller...the big flop.The media is such a joke. It's become a cliche how the media builds up heroes only to tear them down. All that is important is the story and the ratings. And the Bode Miller saga is a perfect example of this hypocracy.
It was NBC's marketing machine and all the various sports pages that played Bode Miller up before the games. They needed buzz for either ratings or circulation. 60 Minutes was completely irresponsible in the way they hyped Bob Simon's interview. They released quotes like "skiier admits skiing drunk and will do it again." Anyone who watched the piece quickly realized that Bode Miller never admitted any such thing and never endorsed skiing drunk. He said he had been feeling the effects from the night after he had won the overall World Cup Title...when he had to race a race that didn't matter to the outcome the next morning. And he couldn't guarantee that it wouldn't happen again. All the time CBS is showing footage of him taking the traditional swill of the victory champagne on the podium...like they had caught him in the act of being in a bender.
Then he goes medaless at the Torino games and the same media that was hyping him earlier tore into him relentlessly. Maybe they were upset that their psuedo-expertise had been exposed. I follow World Cup skiing regularily...not just every four years. Bode has been talking about this media hypocracy for years. Last year after he won the World Cup Overall Title...the first American in 21 years to do so...he stated he might skip the Olympics because the media was taking all the fun out of skiing. He saw friends of his on the circuit go through the same cycle...built up by great exaggeration and then thrown to the wolves when they didn't perform up to expectations.
Of course he skiied. But it didn't look like his heart was in it. He already had his two medals from Salt Lake. He is already the best American skiier of all time. I don't think Americans understand how big the Overall World Cup Title is around the world. I believe he was weary of all the media crap. Funny things is, I don't think Bode is too disappointed by this Olympics. He skis for fun...medals are a bonus. Maybe that's what drives the media the craziest...someone who does things on their own terms.
