Bode Miller gets a bad rap. By being a classic American, an individual with his own mind, he got excoriated by a groupthink nation which said he must conform and play the game its way...ultimately to be accepted and then discarded. Yes, the U.S. needs grist for the mill, someone to shine its light on temporarily before it moves on to a new subject, with very little substance along the way. Furthermore, there's an endless line of wannabes willing to line up for a moment of fame before they go back to their own little lives of drug addiction and arrests. Yes, fame has a cost, you'd think people would know that by now, especially in the social media era where despite some acolytes, most people are there to tear you right down, get you down into the pit where they are, illustrate you're no better than they are, yes, if you want to rise to the pinnacle, beware of the costs.
Bode's big crime? Speaking his mind, being himself.
The public doesn't understand most sports. Unlike basketball and football, in skiing the playing field, i.e. the course, constantly changes, both at different sites and during competition, and weather plays a factor and no one wins every time, no one. And there are those who specialize in one of the five events who can't win in all of them. So, to determine the best ski racer in the world there's an entire season of races, called the World Cup, but in America the only thing that matters is the Olympics.
Where Bode Miller has more medals than any other American skier, seven, in fact, gold, silver and bronze. But he's been labeled a loser, because in Torino, in 2006, he won nothing. Lindsey Vonn won three Olympic medals, one gold, but she's a hero and Bode is a zero. It's all about perception, and instead of playing the Great American Hero, lying about his identity, Miller spoke his truth and as a result was excoriated, his name is a bad word in America.
It gets even worse. Bode was castigated for his commentary at the 2018 Olympics because he analyzed the skiing as opposed to being a cheerleader, boosting Americans until they ended up out of the money. It's a messed up country we live in, really. We want you to be phony, but your phoniness only carries you so far, because unless you are an individual, you do not last. And, if you're lucky, you'll live a long life. What are you going to do with your time outside the spotlight, especially when you're an athlete, your career is brief.
I'm burned out on the news podcasts. It's like every day there's a crisis, we had the election, what has happened thereafter is just not that important, but they make it seem like it is. So, last night, hiking in the mountains, I pulled up the Blister podcast with Bode Miller.
He can talk! He's articulate! He knows it's "anyway," not "anyways"! I was nearly stunned, he's been portrayed as a bumpkin from the hills of New Hampshire who never went to college, a boozer who should be ignored. Instead, he's a thinker with opinions, who is curious. Trust me, this is not ski racing. Now, more than ever, ski racing is a jock sport. It's about working out in the gym, getting strong, cracking jokes in the locker room, if you're not a member of the "team," there's no place for you. It didn't used to be this bad, Billy Kidd was not a fantastic physical specimen, but today if you're not an exercise fanatic, you've got no chance.
Bode was an outsider, wanting to do it his way. Coaches couldn't handle this. Coaches are authoritarians, it's their way or the highway. But Bode kept on breaking the rules and winning!
If you ski at all, you know that around the turn of the century there was a revolution in skiing equipment the so-called "shaped ski." Funnily enough, these advanced planks, taking their inspiration from snowboards, were adopted by the hoi polloi before those at the upper reaches of the sport. You see tradition rules at the elite level, and if you want to change, you're put down. This is how Billy Beane revolutionized baseball with data. No one else believed it, baseball was a gut sport. But it turned out it wasn't. So, Bode Miller employs a recreational shaped ski, the K2 Four, and jumps from the back of the pack to success at the U.S. Nationals. You see shaped skis carve a smoother arc, they're easier to turn to begin with, and they allowed a different line away from the gate, that allowed you to maintain your speed and go faster. But the ski racing community was reluctant to adopt these winners, until athletes like Debra Campagnoni got religion, changed to shaped skis and jumped onto the podium consistently. Don't know who Campagnoni is? According to Wikipedia, she's considered "the best Italian female skier of all time," a legend over there, unknown over here. Campagnoni won four Olympic medals, three gold. She won sixteen World Cup races in fourteen seasons. Bode Miller won thirty three races, and two World Cups in sixteen seasons, and now you know why he was a hero, the biggest man on the Alpine circuit in Europe, a household name. You could never count Bode out.
So in this Blister podcast, Bode initially talks about an education initiative. Truth is, most education turns people into automatons, whereas creative, critical thinking is the basis of American business, never mind its reputation and excellence. And Bode is involved with apps, and a ski company, and he even went to South America to do ayahuasca...in other words he's a seeker, he's taking advantage of the doors opened by his fame, he does not want to rest on his laurels. BUT HOW DID HE GET HERE!
He credits his grandmother. He was seven and wanted to be a world champion. She said you don't even get to compete to be world champion until you're twenty or so, don't get discouraged, you've got a long time to work out the kinks and get better. This is the antithesis of the ethos in the music business, where I'm constantly e-mailed music by parents touting their kids. Am I supposed to believe you were born this way, and at age 11 or 13 or 15 you're an individual genius? It's possible, but highly improbable. It's the journey, the hard work, the failures that get you there. And, the basics. Sure, you can sing, but can you write? Kind of like skiing...can you create your own line?
But Bode was a skinny guy, without the bulk of Hermann Maier. And he wasn't a fast runner. On paper, he looked positively mediocre at best. You know today's athletics, they quantify you, as if that's the sum total of your ability, your stats, but it's not. So, Bode realized, he could not compete with the elite physical specimens. But that did not mean he could not succeed, he had to do it his way, take advantage of what he did better than anybody else to win!
This haunts the music business. It's me-tooism. One person is successful, and then everybody imitates them. Innovation is too risky. The road is too hard. Nobody wants to truly go their own way, they just want to do poorly what other people have already done well. Come on, isn't this country music? The radio tracks are all about trucks, beer and good times and then Chris Stapleton, a man with miles on him, with no prior big success, does it his way, with an outsider producer, and he becomes the biggest act in Nashville seemingly overnight, and everybody agrees! And his fame is not limited to country music, it crosses over to rock and other genres, because he's just that different and good, dare I say unique. As for hip-hop...
So what could Bode do that his compatriots could not? USE HIS BRAIN! He figured out a different way to ski the course. The so-called "line." Everyone agrees where it is but Bode. Then again, that's another tool in Bode's box, he's willing to lay it all on the line, to go for it, to not hold back, to do it his way. If it all worked out, he won. But sometimes he crashed. The American coaches couldn't handle this. He just had to play it safe, do it their way, but Bode knew he could only win doing it his way, and it was the only way that interested him, otherwise the sport wasn't worth doing.
Everyone else played it safe. To get points for the season-long competition. Bode skied to WIN!
That's another point Bode makes. When you start in ski racing there are a hundred racers, and the course deteriorates with each one. So, those in the back of the pack just try to move up the ranks, to get a better starting position. But not Bode, he skied to WIN! And either you've got a winner's mentality or you do not. Not everybody can succeed, usually they're not willing to pay the dues, especially when no one is looking. Bode grew up skiing at Cannon Mountain, with some of the worst weather in the country. But when it was snowin' and blowin' he didn't stay inside, he went out, it was about flipping the perspective, making it fun! And believe me, most people don't want to go out when it's below zero and there are gale force winds. But the winners do.
Another one of Bode's strengths was the mental game. He wrote down scenarios, in a book, something the outside could not see. And when he was in the starting gate, he ran these scenarios through his head, blocked everything else out. That was half of his starting gate mentality. The other was ANGER! Bode speaks truth, he says a lot of winners have a chip on their shoulder, they've got something to prove, having been put-down and ignored forever, they want to show people. I hate to tell you, but a ton of winners, in athletics and business, feel this way. I'm not talking about the person who moves up the ladder, starts at the bottom and becomes CEO, they're managers, not innovators, they're enthralled by their position. Truth is if you've got rough edges, if you speak the truth, you're kicked out of the corporation, but it's these one of a kind people who built the damn corporation!
So, with a unique line in his head, willing to lay it all on the line, Bode believed in himself, wanted to prove to everyone he was right and pushed out of the gate with a totally different mentality than the rest of the skiers, AND HE WON!
Bode says he doesn't know of a single other person who does it that way in ski racing. But he also admits it's hard to see inside someone's brain in skiing. But he did reference Ronnie Lott in football, how he got geared up, angry...
But skiing is an individual sport. And artistic success is all about the individual. Sure, they need a support team, but...if you listen to the label, if you conform, you're a loser. However, if you do it your way, be prepared to become an outcast. But aren't all the true legends in music outcasts, different, from Little Richard and Jerry Lee to everyone from Trent Reznor, Biggie and Prince, who had a chip on his shoulder bigger than his body, who kept telling everybody he needed to do it HIS way?
Corporations hire these old athletes as motivational speakers all the time. Most of what they say is hogwash. It's traditional coach stuff that turns the stomach of individuals. Or else they hire people to talk about their unique feats, who recite the history, but it's hard to identify with it. Listening to Bode last night was one of the few times I've ever heard anyone articulate what it takes to truly make it at the elite level. The perspective, the self-knowledge, the analysis... But most people can't lock on, because they don't want to work that hard, because they're more interested in getting along, being a member of the group. Success is a lonely road, never forget it. And no matter how much success you have people will still put you down, like Bode, but Bode has it right, he knows, you should listen to him, not the bloviating pontificators who keep saying they've got the answers. You've got to find the answers yourself, what makes you special, how you can succeed. That's the American way, or at least the way it used to be. We're a country of individuals. And that does not mean going maskless to the grocery store...Bode never put anybody else at risk in his ski career, only himself, in search of his own personal fulfillment, and a strong dose of needing to prove to the rest of the world there was another way to do it, and he did, he's the most decorated male ski racer in American history, but he's a loser, don't you know?
Start listening to Bode on the Blister podcast at 24:36
"Bode Miller on Education, Mental Preparation, Technology, Ski Design, & More": bit.ly/3muy6ue
You can also download/listen on Apple: apple.co/3ah0ain
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