Kiszla: Bode Miller skis like a rebel and cries like a man

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Bode Miller is not dead. So he cried. And the tears made him feel alive.

Miller wept without shame, his cheeks awash in emotion, after he became the oldest alpine skier in Olympic history to win a medal with a third-place finish Sunday in the super-G.

At age 36, Bode Miller remains a red, white and blue rebel, doing it his way on the hill, inviting a legion of critics to kiss his ski tails. The American rebel wept for his dead brother, Chelone Miller, a snowboarder who had dreamed of competing at the 2014 Games until he passed away last spring after suffering a seizure in the van that served as his home.

Bode Miller wept because he's still alive and kicking.

"Everybody thought I was joking, back when I was 22 years old, and I said my biggest goal (in skiing) was to not kill myself, not hurt myself," Miller said. "It's such a brutal sport. The injuries are so extreme."

This is the brutal truth about skiing at the Olympic level. It's dangerous. It can maim. It's guaranteed to hurt.

Although old enough to know better, Miller keeps pushing the envelope, daring his body to hold an impossible line down the mountain without shattering.

"Risk doesn't work in a linear fashion in skiing the way it does in most sports. In football, if you're not diving into guys and you're not head-butting, you're going to stay more healthy. But, in skiing, if you back off, if you ski a little more tentative, you're almost more likely to get hurt," Miller said.

"If you ski like you're invincible, a lot of times you stay invincible. I am maybe dumb enough — or maybe I have a bad enough short-term memory — that I keep convincing myself that I am invincible, even if I'm ancient and have dealt with a lot of injuries."

A skier can go faster on his boards than you do rolling down the highway in your car. So every racer must make peace with the frightening reality that, sooner or later, the sport is going to break the body.

Bode Miller and his wife, Morgan Beck, embrace Saturday after the super-G.

Bode Miller and his wife, Morgan Beck, embrace Saturday after the super-G. (Alexander Klein, Getty Images)

"I didn't really think I could get injured until I got injured, and then one thing went and another thing went and another thing went," said Andrew Weibrecht, one of the most pleasant American surprises in Russia. He claimed second place in this super-G, completing a comeback from four years ago when it often seemed his body was one big, ugly bruise, damaged from repeated injuries to his shoulders and ankles.

Chronic pain, and the fear of more physical agony with the next mistake, can intimidate even the best skiers.

"It becomes an obstacle that I've had to wrap my head around," Weibrecht said. "That's been one of the hardest things to get back to this level: really letting (the fear of injury) go."

An old skier rarely rides gloriously into the sunset. The more frequent exit from competitive skiing is being strapped to a toboggan on the way to the medical tent. American Picabo Street shattered her femur two months after winning gold at the 1998 Olympics. Lindsey Vonn is absent from Russia as she struggles with a knee injury that refuses to heal.

How many times has the ski career of Miller been buried?

In 2006 at the Winter Games, Miller was dismissed as bad boy gone bust, a disappointment shut out from the podium in Italy. After knee surgery forced him to miss last season, Miller accepted the fact his body might be too beaten up to race again.

Looking too slow and too gray to medal during these Games in Russia, Miller grabbed a bonus bronze in the super-G. He finished a half second behind winner Kjetil Jansrud of Norway, and Miller caused officials to double check the watch when Canada's Jan Hudec matched his exact time of 1 minute, 18.67 seconds.

"I think I'm just a late bloomer," Miller joked.

Here's why the laughter was mixed with tears. When Miller had won the sixth Olympic medal of his career, he looked in the crowd for the face of "Chilly," his kid brother. After a motorcycle crash in 2005, Chelone Miller spent 11 days in a coma and fought for years to regain his health, but never found a way to win that battle.

"It was all very raw for me," said Bode Miller, proud of his tears. "And, at the finish, it all just kind of came out."

Miller raced in the memory of his deceased brother, and the greatest alpine skier in U.S. history attacked the mountain in the name of all the skiers the mountain has broken.

The tears of Bode Miller shouted: Rage on.

Don't bury him. The American rebel ain't dead yet.

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