Posted on 02/10/2014 2:51:38 AM PST by Berlin_Freeper
Lowering his head, then crouching in a corner, Bode Miller lingered in the finish area after his slower-than-expected Olympic downhill run, contemplating where things might have gone wrong.
Most everyone, Miller included, thought he was the man to beat entering Sunday’s race.
Most everyone, the 36-year-old New Hampshire native included, thought he had a realistic shot at becoming the oldest Alpine gold medalist in Winter Games history.
He didn’t even come close. Failing to produce the sort of near-perfect performance he came up with in practice, Miller finished eighth in the downhill, more than a half-second slower than champion Matthias Mayer of Austria, who charged down the course in 2 minutes, 6.23 seconds.
‘‘This can be a tough one to swallow today, having skied so well in the training runs, and then come in and be way out of the medals,’’ said Miller, who is based in California.
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonglobe.com ...
That’s the nature of the Olympics. The competition is such that on a given day any of a number of people can take the Gold. Even if I had that level of athletic talent, I would probably choke.. The pressure seems enormous.
Red Hampshire fail...LOL! The black armbands will out in force around Red England today...
Most everyone (with typical Red England arrogance), Miller included, thought he was the man to beat entering Sunday’s race.
That’s not really fair. The guy had been the fastest all week during training runs.
That was a quote from the article (sans the arrogance comment)...Red Englanders always count their chickens before they hatch. Oops.
Yep, I remember the 1984 olympics when an unknown U.S. downhiller named Bill Johnson won the gold medal.
That was the peak of his career and it was all downhill from there, probably one of the most tragic stories I have ever followed.........
Too bad — those things happen.
Next —
“That was the peak of his career and it was all downhill from there, probably one of the most tragic stories I have ever followed......... “
I hadn’t known his story until reading it after reading your post. Horribly tragic. Just sad. Life is so unpredictable. A brief moment in the sun, on top of the world, then just tragedy. I hope and pray that the spiritual part of him has somehow grown enormously as a consequence, and that in the end this is his real Gold.
This is one of the reasons I have come to dislike the Olympics. In this day and age, the top athletes are competing against each other all year, every year. It is absurd to attach disproportionate importance to a single event. That is compounded by events that are contaminated by subjective judging. I dislike the soccer World Cup for the same reason.
Team sports should play an annual world championship. It doesn't need to be done world cup style, with all the buildup, group play, and hype; just integrate a world championship competition into the rhythm of existing league play. In individual sports, the world championship should be awarded based on cumulative points in a cycle of top tier events over the year. As the Olympics stand today, they are conducted for the media, not the athletes.
The equity case is especially acute in injury situations. It is a routine story: the world champion who has dominated a sport for two or three seasons comes up with an injury at the Olympics. The media is expert at milking such situations for "drama and tragedy" stories, but it's time to dig deeper and question the system that attaches so much prestige (and down the road, money) to single events.
The guy is 36 years old and still competing at the highest level in the world against men that are 10 years younger.
Contemplate this: the difference between 1st place and 8th place was 0.52 seconds. This is after dropping over 3000 vertical feet in 2 minutes and 6 seconds going as fast as 85 miles per hour.
If they ran the race again today, anyone of the top ten could come in first.
When less than a half second separates 1st from 8th place in a roughly two minute run, yeah, I would agree.
If they ran the race again today, anyone of the top ten could come in first.
True, but Red Englander sports fans shouldn't count their chickens before they hatch.
...but he wasn't when it mattered. Red Englanders have the annoying habit of thinking they DESERVE to win every single sporting event that comes down the pike; be it baseball, football, basketball, the Olympics, and so on. When they don't, they whine like 5-year olds. It's great to see them taken down a peg or two now and then. I know ESPN doesn't think so, but there are great sports teams and athletes who aren't based in Red England.
On any given Sunday........
Same goes for the Super Bowl and the BCS Championship...a team can be great all year, then suffer a key injury right before the big game, and the season then is all for naught.
What is a “Red Englanders”?
I agree. This year, for the first time in a few decades, the Olympics are worth watching. The younger Olympians were toddlers when Bodie Miller and the other long-time Olympians were first winning their medals. Of course some of them, with strategy, youth, and physical fitness are going to have a chance at beating them. I wish they'd all be gracious (many are) about another generation coming along. I'm not a competitive athelete, so to observer me, anyone in the top 20 is remarkable.
Sage and the equally crazy females snow board gold winners are the wave of the future. So is that magnificent 15 year old Russian girl ice skater. That's the way it should be.
I use ‘red’ instead of ‘new’ to represent the blood of unborn children slaughtered in the northeast and the infatuation the majority seems to have with ‘communism’. Two of the consequences that manifest when Yehovah is rejected by a majority of the people. (Response from a Red Hampshire TEACHER when I informed her that Red Hampshire is the least religious state in America? “GOOD!”)
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