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The most interesting part of my job as an international ski reporter is visiting the champions at home. Since ski racing reporting is a full-time job for me, I like to take some time for it while most of my colleagues are busy with football, tennis, Formula 1, cycling or track-and-field stories.
So last spring, I travelled to New Hampshire to visit the place where Bode Miller grew up – in Franconia, which is located in the White Mountains region. I drove with a great friend of mine, Paul Robbins, a well known chef who runs a famous frog farm in nearby Vermont. He knows the Miller family for a long time. One of Bode’s grandfathers was well-known as an innkeeper and resort operator and his uncle Mike Kenney is a former US coach who now coaches at the regional level.
New England – the name of the Northeastern part of the USA where British colonists first settled in the 17th and 18th centuries - is just a great place to visit in springtime. It’s also a very historical region for recreational skiing and ski racing. The first ski lift was built nearby in place named Woodstock – it’s not the same place where the famous rock concert took place three decades ago – and most of the first US racers grew up in the East in great areas such as Stowe, Franconia, Waterville Valley and Stratton Mountain.
The first US World Cup races took place in March 1967 in Franconia where France’s Jean Claude Killy won within three days three races in three specialties! This might be a reason why one of the best US skiers growing up there - and someone who has a keen appreciation of ski history - has become such a strong allrounder!
A visit to Bretton Woods
We started our visit with a tour of Bretton Woods – an impressive winter and summer resort located near Mt Washington, the tallent peak in the Northeast (6,288 feet, nearly 2,000 meters) where a steam-train built 140 years ago brings passengers up to the summit of that impressive mountain overlooking the entire region. Bode has a PR agreement with Bretton Woods, which famous around the world because of the crucial agreements signed near the end of WW II (1944) to establish a new economical era in the free world. It’s located approximately 35 minutes away from Franconia.
The Mt Washington Hotel, bui8lt in 1902, is huge and gorgeous – a wonderful location to relax and enjoy life far from the stress and urgency of the pell-mell of the cities! At the end of last winter, Miller organized a fund-raising event for families – ski and golf – which raised money for the local disabled ski program. People skied in the morning and plaid golf in the afternoon. Everybody just had a blast during that weekend!
Two months later - in July - he played an exhibition with former tennis star Johan Kriek on one of the courts of that superb hotel – he even won a few games and had great fun...and so did the hundreds of spectators. In August, he played against Steffi Graff at the US Open – it was tougher for him to play in front of twenty thousand spectators!
Bode likes soccer
Bode likes to spend most of his off-season at home – a nice new house located near the road, not far from the courts of the tennis camp run by his family. When the ski season is over, he also takes part in the regional soccer tournament, plays golf and travels through the country for various PR-activities when he's not training for skiing in Europe, South America or New Zealand.
One thing Bode never misses is teaching at the camp, teaching tennis to happy teenagers. At noon, they all eat outside the main lodge (this is where Bode was born). The cook is Bode’s friend Jake who drives him around Europe in the winter in his mobile-home!
Miller also plays soccer with the kids but he also takes some time for his own physical preparation. He follows an original program with his uncle, Mike Kenney - his sister is Bode's mother Jo. Bode and Mike built a special machine to lift weights in a smoother way. Among one of his special training methods is running uphill with one of the heavy roller normally used to flatten to tennis courts!
He also inline-skates and rides his bike once in a while – not too often, though, because, he says, it gets too boring for him.
The house in the woods
The most interesting part of our visit was dedicated to the three-story log home built by his parents in the middle of the woods, higher in the mountains. After half an hour of hard walking, the traveller finally discovers a nice little clearing situated near a small creek. There you can see a wooden house similar to which could have been erected by pioneers a few hundred years ago. Quite a nice and surprising place where it’s certainly agreeable to live when you enjoy solitude and the life of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. One of Bode sisters lives there now with her husband and their two daughters.
Jo Miller resided there for years while raising her four children – among them Bode who certainly had a great time feeling free as a bird. She often took him to work at Cannon Mountain, the nearby ski area where Bode soon started skiing...and riding a snowboard.
This unique and special childhood forged a very independent and driven young man who began soon to set his own goals, skiing tirelessly from the morning until the area closed each day.
Among those goals was to become a great ski racer – but in his own way. He enjoyed snowboarding but, Miller says, he chose ski racing because there was a "ladder" of progression for him to climb for the US Ski Team - there was no development program for snowboarding. It took him much determination and stubbornness to achieve this goal. His slalom triumph under the lights in Sestriere tied him with Marc Girardelli as the only two men to win in four disciplines in one season and was certainly a highlight in his career! However, as much as Bode knows ski racing history, and enjoys making some history of his own, it's not an obsession - he loves to compete, but if he wins or skis off course, he starts the next day with a fresh approach, never looking back, always pushing foward. Who would have bet a penny that this strong-minded and almost wild kid could reach such an elevated peak – comparable to a tennis or a golf Grand Slam – using such an unusual technique?
As many if not most of other ski heroes, Bode is an independent thinker, not necessarily a rebel but definitely an inspired athlete who followed his own path, creating his own rules...and deeply convinced that he was right to listen to his instinct and always search for a maximum of fun and speed while cruising down the slopes! Even now, it’s his priority when he fight his way through the slalom poles or on the downhill runs. “No guts – no fun” could be his leitmotiv because he doesn’t care about glory!
What we see on the racing courses is the direct and extraordinary result of what took place back in Franconia more than twenty years ago – Bode would not be Bode if he would have been raised more traditionally in Vail, Aspen, Zermatt, St Anton or Megêve!
And you don’t have a chance to start to understand him without going there! Without seeing the "cradle" where he learned to set his course and follow it. For another major champion, everything began in a parking lot at the foot of the Hindertuxer glacier in Austria, another one was a bricklayer and a ski-instructor before focusing on ski racing!
Unique destinies which produce unique champions!
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