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Outside Magazine January 2004

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Gate Crasher (Cont.)


	King of Kitzbühel: Daron Rahlves, at the Sölden World Cup course (Jake Chessum)

ONE AFTERNOON DURING the New Zealand training camp, someone starts a pickup soccer game on the hotel lawn, three on three and then four on four. Below them, Lake Wanaka sparkles in the sunshine, while in the distance loom the snow-frosted peaks of Treble Cone, where the team has spent a hard morning training.

Everyone is already tired, but that doesn't seem to matter: It's one of those days when you play to the point of exhaustion and then keep on going. By the time Miller shows up, fresh from the golf course, the original players are long gone, but the game is still going, pausing only when the ball flies into the bushes or skitters out into Ardmore Street, the main drag of the mellow ski town of Wanaka.

The new arrival pushes things into another zone. All semblance of teamwork vanishes, perhaps because everyone else is too tired to run anymore, and the ball simply gravitates to Miller's feet. It's exhibition time, and off he goes, dribbling around, over, and through his opponents—all except one.

Time after time, he comes up against Rahlves, who's in warm-up pants and a Red Bull cap. It doesn't seem to matter that Miller towers over him like a wookie over a hobbit. Miller was an all-state soccer player in high school and still dreams about turning pro, while Rahlves hardly ever plays. But Rahlves always seems to get a piece of the ball. It's almost a point of pride.

"Dude," Miller gasps after one extended bout (through a flowerbed), "you've, like, got this extra lunge. Most people, you beat 'em and you're like, 'Nyah-nyah'—but you can lunge again." Finally their shins meet and they both stagger backward, clutching their wounds. A coach looks alarmed, briefly, until it's clear that nobody's limping too seriously. But the game's over. It's almost sunset, tomorrow's another long day, and it'd really be a bummer to ruin what could be the best season in U.S. skiing history over a game of pickup soccer. In a way, this is just a continuation of what started on the hill, Miller playing himself into shape (he already seems fitter and more agile than when he first hit camp), dazzling everyone with his natural physical gifts, inspiring those around him, especially Rahlves. He lives to play, and plays to live, and it doesn't much matter if it's pickup soccer, a round of golf, or a World Cup race.

Miller dazzles everyone with his natural physical gifts, inspiring those around him, especially Rahlves. He lives to play, and plays to live, and it doesn't matter if it's pickup soccer, a round of golf, or a World Cup race.

Which brings us back to the paradox of Bode Miller: He wants, more than anything, to be recognized as the best skier in the world, if not the best who ever lived. Yet he's a pure sportsman, one who doesn't necessarily measure success by trophies and medals and the hopes that others hang on him. "Sports have never been fun for me because other people get to watch," he says. "They're fun because I get to do 'em."

"It's almost a religious, or emotional, kind of thing for him," says Mike Kenney, who probably knows him best. "He performs out of inspiration. He doesn't perform because he's goal-oriented. He performs because he loves expressing himself athletically."

During one of our conversations in New Zealand, Miller drove home the point. I asked him to pick his best race of last season. He thought for a moment and said, "Super G at Val Gardena. It was fuckin' awesome. I just killed it. I made mistakes, but I made sick recoveries. I won a section, where it's like three shoop-de-doos, you're like turning all through it, and it's dark as shit. I won that section, starting in the pitch-black."

But the higher-ranked skiers got to pick later start numbers, and when the sun came out, the course got faster and Bode's time drifted down the scoreboard. "If I'd started later, I would have won," he shrugged. "But it was one of the best races I've ever had."

He finished sixth—off the podium, out of the headlines, and more than satisfied.

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