Speed Demon

Not much about Bode (Bo-dee) Miller is conventional. Raised in a mountainside cabin in Franconia, N.H., that lacked electricity and plumbing, he was home-schooled until he was 8 by hippie parents. His father Woody was on the ski patrol and sold energy snacks to scrape by. His mother Jo came from a family of racers. As a young boy he spent nearly every winter day on nearby Cannon Mountain. His mother dropped him off at the base of the hill, and he would find his own ride home. In the summer, tennis gave him agility and soccer a great feel for his feet, which he says is one of his skiing strengths. He started racing young. "It's a very elemental sport," Miller told TIME at a recent race stop in Kitzbühel, Austria. "You're using just gravity to get down the mountain and trying to cut down on friction and wind resistance and air. It's pretty pure."

His unorthodox style is the logical result of trying to ski the straightest possible line down the hill. Instead of using sweeping arced turns through the gates, he cuts shorter, sharper-radius turns. "Challenging the line that way increases the force on your body, and it reacts differently," says McNichol. Although he has been no stranger to the podium over the past four years, Miller burst out of the gates this season. He won four of the first six races, and six of the first 10. While other skiers might take until December to start skiing their best, Miller says, "Four or five days, and I'm there."

As wild and crazy as Miller is on skis, his personality is stubbornly down-to-earth. In the off-season, he goes back to New Hampshire to help out with the kids at his parents' tennis camp. On the World Cup racing circuit in Europe, he drives from alp to alp in a huge RV, the "Bode Mobile." He recently started his own talk show on the Sirius satellite-radio network, on which he can chat about skiing and partying in a "fairly core" way. Despite his growing exposure, Miller says he is not designed for stardom. In fact, the media interviews, the frantic fan adulation and the obligations to sponsors--all of which he lumps together as "distractions" from the ski racing he loves--are beginning to wear thin.

What sets Miller apart, says McNichol, is his "supreme self-confidence; not a cockiness, just a deep rooted belief in himself and his ability." That may explain his popularity. A recent Swiss poll rated Miller the most popular skier on the mountain. He's even appreciated by his rivals. Writing in Sportwoche, an Austrian weekly, slalom ace Rainer Schoenfelder credited Miller and his versatility with keeping media attention on the old-fashioned finesse events like slalom in the X Games era. "Thank God for Bode Miller!" he said. Heading into next year's Olympics in Torino, the U.S. ski team feels exactly the same way. •