Marcus Hayes: It's not Miller time unless Bode wins

WHISTLER, British Columbia - It's no fun unless Bode wins.

He's got to win some medal, any medal, to make the men's Alpine events fun.

Austrian futility in the face of Swiss and Norwegian success might be the hard news on the slopes, but Bode Miller, the 2006 rebel without a podium, put these mountains on his shoulders. He had made skiing sexy again.

Yes, sexier than Lindsey Vonn.

Cowboy sexy. Downhill, hair-on-fire, do-it-my-way sexy.

He's won three medals at the age of 32 in his fourth Olympics, the games where he finally is fulfilling his promise. A fourth medal will set an Olympic record for men's Alpine medals at one games, and will give him six medals overall, extending his record for Alpine medals by an American.

It might have happened yesterday.

Instead, he bombed out near the end of his first run on the giant slalom course, ending his day, no need for a second run. Maybe it's for the best.

He can get more rest until Saturday, when the slalom, the last Alpine event, takes place. Chasing the record, blanked yesterday, the drama could not be greater.

Well, maybe it could. Bode finally secured a gold medal, so that's out of the way.

But after his comeback win that earned him that gold in the super-combined on Sunday, Bode told everyone he was tired. His ankle hurt. His brain was fried.

That admission lent humanity to his crassness, a vulnerability to his causticity.

He was honest. Yesterday, he skied hard and fast . . . and tired.

Yesterday, Miller hooked a glove on a gate near the end through his first giant slalom run, aborting a race he maybe never should have skied. He nearly fell twice before he missed the gate. He clipped two gates before he skied off course. He was woefully behind the pace when he left the track.

With that, the crowd at Whistler Creekside audibly deflated.

The sun even went behind the clouds.

"I'm taking more risk than everyone else. That's partly why I'm able to get medals. It looks easy when you make it," he told the Associated Press, the only outlet he spoke with. "I was right there. I was right on the edge."

The course was sunlit for much of the morning runs, but the light began to slip as Miller's run approached. The bumpy course might have been more manageable for conservative skiers, but it was too much for him.

"I hit any of those little bumps while I'm moving, if I can't see them, I blow out," he said.

Carlo Janka of Switzerland won, Kjetil Jansrud of Norway took silver and Norwegian countryman Aksel Lund Svindal collected the bronze, his third medal of the games. Ted Ligety, the American whose focus on the giant slalom brought him to these games ranked first in the event, sputtered to eighth place on his first run, was 15th on his second and finished ninth.

Ligety at least put himself in contention. After sailing through the top portion of the course, Bode never really was.

Apparently, Bode was even too tired yesterday to talk about it at any real length. He squirmed through fencing to avoid the massed press, a group he treats with derision, anyway.

That's OK. Bode's contempt for the media doesn't matter to skiing fans, or Olympic fans, or anyone, really, except the media.

Besides, you think John Wayne would've embraced the press? Clint Eastwood? Bruce Willis?

Yippee-ki-yay, Bob Costas.

Bode suffers ignorance with no grace. Kind of like the way he skis.

That act backfired 4 years ago.

Bode was boorish, which was fine, but he lost, which was not. Cowboy heroes are supposed to hit it hard all night and hit it harder at the showdown.

Bode's career epitaph might have been his notorious Turin quote after his medal-free performance: "At least I got to party at an Olympic level."

That would have been shameful, and he knows that, so he came back. He came back to skiing, to U.S. skiing, after 2 years of financing his career himself. Really, how American is that?

He won the 2008 World Cup on his own dime, but being the head of his Team America consortium wore him out and sidelined him for 7 months. He re-evaluated, decided he wanted one more Olympic shot. The layoff's effects were all too obvious yesterday.

Even so, he remained true to his credo:

Ski hard. Ski with abandon. Ski like you love it.

He stripped himself of some sponsors and support staff, hoping to ski cleaner; at least, cleaner than he skied in Turin.

He contends, somewhat incredibly, that while he let loose in the clubs at night in Turin, he held on too tightly during the day. His runs were too calculated, too constricted. He ignored the Olympic energy and came away with a fifth, a sixth, two DNF's and a DQ.

Here, he has embraced the Olympic energy. He channeled it into those three medals in his first three races - bronze in the downhill, silver in the Super-G, and that unexpected gold.

He didn't have the energy to channel on the Dave Murray Downhill run yesterday. The course was wintry up top, icy in the middle, mushy further below, and it changed too much for Miller, and eight others who didn't finish.

Oh, well. Everybody gets bucked off the horse sometime.

That's what's wonderful about Miller. He doesn't mind leaving the saddle, as long as he was riding hard when he left it.

He is not repentant, he is not prodigal - but it kind of feels like he is.

He is flawed, and he has failed, and that's what we look for in heroes.

And, of course, we hope they win.

Or else it's just no fun.

Send e-mail to hayesm@phillynews.com