World Cup champion Bode Miller, a five-event racer on the U.S. Ski Team, reports regularly from the World Cup tour for The Denver Post.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates – This is an amazing place. It’s right on the Persian Gulf, but it’s desert right up to the coastline. There are trillions of dollars of investment money floating around, and they’re building 65 to 70 huge skyscrapers all at once in a 10-square-mile radius. A city has never been built like this before. It’s just unbelievable development going on.
I came down here last Wednesday to hang out with my brother and play some golf, skipping the World Cup races last weekend in Garmisch, Germany. I’m planning on going back Wednesday, and I will race this weekend in Chamonix, France, unless the downhill training run on Thursday is canceled because of weather.
It wasn’t about “recharging my batteries.” That’s sort of a weird theory, I think, like any of the other weird theories people come up with. I just wanted to play golf. Whether I’m “recharged” or not, I don’t really think of it that way, but I got to play golf and that was good.
I wanted to see Dubai, and I wanted my brother to have a chance to go golfing, so this made sense. It was the easiest place for both of us to come and kill a few birds with one stone.
With the Olympics just over a week away, it’s not like I’m dreading it. I maybe don’t enjoy all the media attention, but most of the reason I don’t enjoy it is because of the lack of effectiveness.
I don’t mind doing stuff if there is some effect, but as you’ve seen with the media stuff in the past, I say what I think and then it’s up to the media to make that effective. Or they can make it absolutely not effective. They choose to do the latter, and that’s what makes it not enjoyable.
It’s not that I don’t like talking to people. I don’t mind even dealing with being a role model or any of that stuff. But it’s not up to me alone to make the whole thing effective and positive, it’s up to other people also.
At the Olympics there will be a lot of media who don’t normally follow ski racing, but I can have fun with them. I try to do it in a lighthearted way. I don’t blame them for not knowing about ski racing. That’s one of the things I enjoy about the sport, that it’s not well known in the U.S. Mentally sparring with them is more fun than sparring with the same people I do all the time in Europe.
