No athlete probably wanted a medal more or pretended to care less when it arrived.
But that's Bode Miller.
Four years after partying like an Olympian in Turin, he finally skied like one at the Vancouver Games, wrapping up a bronze with a nearly error-free run down a course that tests every last bit of a racer's skill.
``It's not a gold,'' Miller said breezily, ``but the skiing was good.''
The man insists he still skis to please himself, not the clock or what anyone else thinks. A few fellow competitors who crossed paths with Miller before the race said they were stunned by how silent and jittery the normally nonchalant Miller seemed, but there was no proving that afterward.
What about regrets, redemption, repentance?
Not a chance.
So naturally, when a reporter asked Miller whether he planned to sample the nightlife in this picture-postcard ski town, which boasts more temptation on a single block than all of Sestriere and the neighboring villages in the Italian Alps combined, a grin slowly creased his lips.
``Will you do anything different this time?''
The grin erupted into a full-throated chuckle.
``The Olympics just started,'' Miller said, drawing everyone into the joke. ``You got to give me some time.''
To the same sportswriter who chased down Miller for interviews at the Turin Olympics - twice - and spent several hours watching him command the room at the Tabata disco - the only real full-service saloon in Sestriere, he sounds remarkably the same.
Still brimming with bravado, still unaware or totally uninterested in how the sporting public perceives him, still explaining himself in rambling sentences filled with vague terms like ``overamped,'' ``excited-nervous, not anxiety-nervous,'' and ``emotional state'' that offer little insight and more often than not, wind up providing no insight at all.
The window into his soul, at least the one that's open whenever his mouth is, remains as foggy as ever.
So rather than walk back what he says, it might be more revealing to look at what he does.
Miller has parked the RV he lived in at the Turin Games and is bunking with the rest of the U.S. team in nearby condos instead. He even has a suite-mate, fellow skier Ted Ligety, who also happens to be the same guy Miller took out on the town for a baptism by firewater several hours after Ligety, then 21, upset the field in Turin and won a gold medal.
Except this time around, everyone on the team portrays Miller as the very picture of moderation. Now 32, he has a young daughter he rarely talks about, but people around him say fatherhood has definitely made him more responsible. Most tellingly, perhaps, he is taking direction well from others, the same U.S. coaching staff he once ignored.
In turn, the coaches have begun holding Miller up as a (gulp) role model.
``In training, Bode comes out and when he trains, he trains hard and he pushes hard,'' said Sasha Rearick, the U.S. men's team head coach. ``He pushes the staff hard to make sure that training is good, he pushes his serviceman to make sure the skis are good.
``He wants guys around him,'' Rearick added, ``that are pushing.''
That's progress, no matter how you measure it, since the pushing Miller was best known for in the past was in favor of extending closing hour at the bar.
The moment he sat down for a post-race interview, his zany legend now burnished by a bronze to go with the two silvers from Salt Lake City and the oh-for-5 in Turin, someone pointed out that four years ago Miller was cast as a ``disinterested villain'' and now was likely to be recast as ``a redemptive hero.''
``Do you feel like either of those are fair?'' he was asked.
He rubbed the stubble on his chin and thought about it for a moment.
Minutes earlier, as Miller exited doping control headed for the interview room, the team's press attache asked him to zip up his red U.S. team ski jacket to hide the scruffy flannel shirt he'd already changed into. He was clearly trying to be on his best behavior. That was really different.
``I don't mind,'' he began. ``You guys are in charge of that stuff. I pretty much focus on going out and skiing. It's what I've always done. I'm hoping I can keep doing it.''
If the verdict is ours to deliver, the answer is neither villain then nor hero now. Miller was the best skier on the planet four years ago and what he demonstrated again in the space of just under two minutes is that on any given day he can be so again.
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Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke(at)ap.org
