No reason to fret over Bode's DNF

No matter where you sit on the Bode Miller love-or-loath continuum, it's hard to argue that his name does not spark the liveliest discussions in all of skiing.  He has given us a lot to think about since leaving skiing last February following the world championships. Largely because he ain't talking. Not like he used to anyway. So, in many ways we're left guessing.  

Like what to make of his return to World Cup skiing in Levi, Finland? Some corners already called it an abomination. That seems a bit much given his track record. As this was his 76th World Cup slalom DNF (did not finish) of his career, it's more continuation than abomination. Personally, I like the take of his teammate Ted Ligety: "He looks like a duck," he told me on the phone, describing the result of the gate slap Miller received but that the TV cameras missed.

No psychoanalysis, no prognostication, no palm reading. A gate slipped through his hands, and it caught him on the bridge of the nose giving Miller a fat lip, and he skied out. If it looks like a duck, talks and walks like one, maybe it really is just a duck.

Here are the facts: Miller returned to skiing October 4th, after nearly eight months away. By his own admission (seconded by his coaches) he was not race fit. Five weeks later, he was racing.

In his best shape, Miller is still pickier than the Princess and the Pea when it comes to his equipment. Picky to the point where coaches in recent years have felt that he spends so much time testing slalom skis and set ups that he rarely gets down to just training.

That proclivity hasn't changed, and to paraphrase Miller's own blog, he could still feel the pea on his sluggish run one. It didn't look good or fast. What was noteworthy was that you could see he was trying to finish.

This is the man with the lowest slalom finish rate (30 percent) of any legitimate player in the sport. He skied out of the first dozen World Cup slaloms of his career. In his second finish ever, he was fourth. He didn't finish 18 of the next 20, then it was Yatzee: three wins and three more podiums. Another DNF fest followed.

You get the picture. Miller skis to win slalom like no one else in the business.  When I talked to his coaches before the race in Levi, they said he was skiing quite fast in training against the Swedes.

Not the pace of Ligety, who was handily outpacing them all including Levi's first-run leader Andre Myhrer, but fast. Enough speed that I could feel their trepidation: Miller would go for the win and very likely blow out. But he didn't.

He was the 32-year-old, consummate "professional" that head technical coach Rudi Soulard had described to me the day before. This is Soulard's second year with the U.S. team and first month working with Miller.

Interestingly, Soulard is the one who put Swedish slalom skiing back on the map in 2007 when they climbed to number two in the slalom team rankings. He did so in large part, as he tells it, by stealing lessons from the skiing of Ligety and Miller.

Though he knew Miller's skiing intimately, he knew the man only through stories and legend. That legend does not include the welcoming of coaches and their opinions with open arms. That said, it seems Miller and Soulard hit it off.

Soulard has been nothing less than impressed. From testing, to training, to diet and recovery he calls Miller a total pro. "He is 32 now and very professional, not this wild child from before."   

So maybe it's possible that this DNF is slightly different from the 75 before it. Not a duck, nor a wild child, but the result of a consummate professional looking to master what's left of his prodigious talents. That's just a guess of course, but either way, Bode Miller is back and he's got everyone talking.