Miller must muster results over big talk

TURIN, Italy – The Italian Alps do not care about hype. That will be the beauty of watching Bode Miller ski the Olympic downhill in the skiing village of Sestriere today. The Alps don’t care that Miller skied drunk, that he may or may not care about medals, that he had an outhouse when he was young, that he’s anti-commercialism except in the case of his commercials.

The Alps are just there. Ski fast. Crash. Win gold. Fall off the mountain. Break both legs. The Alps don’t care. The Alps go on being the Alps. This is the real no-spin zone.

After hearing all the talk and seeing all the cover photos, that’s what we need. No spin. No hype. We finally might see a little bit of what’s really inside Bode Miller.

For the last month, Miller has been The Official Story of the Winter Games XX, a title he deliberately snagged when he went on “60 Minutes,” and mouthed off about how it’s not easy skiing when you’re wasted. He created the expected stir. He told Rolling Stone magazine that cyclist Lance Armstrong was doping. That created the expected stir, too. Miller knew exactly what he was doing. Chatter like that, along with his remarkable skiing talents, landed him on the cover of Newsweek and Time in the same week; it secured him lucrative endorsements and drew speaking engagements.

It also got him his own high-tech Nike Web site, www.joinbode.com, on which he appears to be starting a new cult:

“Join the bold, the brazen, the unintimidated,” the Web site demands. “Join not having excuses. Join the idea that fun is the source of all joy. Join the unwillingness to give in. Join doing things your own way. Join not joining. … Join karma and nature and the effect you have on your world. Join your philosophy. Join something bigger than you are. Join what you believe. Join Bode.”

Um, OK. I have no idea if Bode actually came up with all those idiotic words or if they were dreamed up by some Nike ad wizard not quite senior enough to write LeBron James copy. But we do know that Bode has said that “fun is the source of all joy,” a proverb thought up by someone who obviously has never had a child or, you know, a real job. This is the ski bum Zen, the philosophy of a dude flying down mountains, crashing and soaring, getting hammered with his buddies and wondering how people work 9 to 5.

That’s OK. That’s the charming part of Miller. Hey, we all love a maverick willing to snub authority and take chances and chase his passions and all that Dirty Harry, James Dean, James Bond stuff. But, here’s the deal: The maverick has to come through in the end. After all the rebel yelling and endorsement cashing, the maverick has to find a way to inspire us.

Now we’ll find out if Miller has it in him. He has been, for a few years, the most daring skier in the world. Competitors marvel and cringe at the way he skis, all out and all in at the same time. Miller risks spectacular crashes in an attempt to save three-tenths of a second. He calls the style “Freaking Out.” The Freak Out (Le Freak, C’est Chic) produced two silver medals at the 2002 games in Salt Lake City. In 2004, Miller became the first American in 22 years to win the overall World Cup title.

The style also has produced freaky crashes all over the world. None of the top skiers in the world crashes as much as Miller. So, nobody really knows what will happen. Miller could win five gold medals here at the Games. He could win no medals at all. He could place his name next to Jean Claude Killy and Alberto Tomba and Hermann Maier and Picabo Street and the other skiers who ignited their nations with stirring mountain runs.

Or he could crash, burn, and no matter what he said then, he would be just another overhyped, overexposed, overproduced flop.

We will see what Miller has inside. That’s the beauty of downhill skiing. There are no judges to condemn, no umpires to kick dirt on, no athletic directors to blame, no referees to cry about the next day. It will just be Miller, his teammate Daron Rahlves, Hermann Maier and a bunch of other would-be heroes, and the Italian Alps. The fastest to the bottom wins. That’s all.

“In sports, it’s all about winning,” Miller says on joinbode.com. “I think it’s ironic and depressing, and I’m determined to change that.”

Well, who knows? Miller might have the talent and nerve to change people’s thinking. The truth, though, is he has to win first.