The expected failure of Bode Miller

For all the punishment he's taken, you'd think Bode Miller booted a last second kick wide right in the Super Bowl because he'd been doing body shots stripper's chest just before kicking a baby. True, he is leaving Turin with zero medals in five events he had a chance to medal in, but to all the columnists, commentators and pundits that have been calling him the biggest choke artist in the history of sport: relax - he never wanted to be an Olympic hero, and he gave us many, many clues that he would fail.

Miller is yet another example of media hype outweighing the product. That hype has destroyed more than one athlete: Ryan Leaf, Brian Bosworth and Tony Mandarich all were promoted like crazy before proving to be utter duds, and that's only in football. Every sport has several failures, and as a result of his pre-Olympic coverage, Miller is yet another in a long line of them.

There has been an outpouring of outrage and catcalls at his failure to live up to this pre-Olympic hype, but I think Miller had very little to do with that hype, and we should have seen his failure coming.

Miller wasn't always a scapegoat - in Salt Lake City in 2002, Miller missed a gate, placing him out of medal contention. Instead of simply hanging his head, he hiked back up the mountain and went around the gate he missed - an attempt to respect the spirit of the Olympics that endeared him to many sportswriters. He also won two silver medals.

In the beginning of 2005 he won his first World Cup title, and expectations for him skyrocketed. He got his own video-game deal, more endorsement deals, and in the ramp-up to the Olympics, more interviews and exposure. That's where the first suggestions of his failure began to show on a national level.

An interview aired on 60 Minutes in January had Miller admitting to skiing drunk, and Rolling Stone published comments he made accusing Barry Bonds and Lance Armstrong of cheating with performance enhancing drugs. Add to that fawning late January Time Magazine covers and the inaugural cover of the New York Times' Play magazine and a media cycle constantly regurgitating his words, and it's easy to see why Miller cracked.

Miller never has had the reputation of a completely stable guy - his 2005 biography describes his childhood as a winter Tarzan, coming from a family of people whose love for the outdoors borders on strange, with Miller the strangest of them all. His skiing style also plays into that character: wild, aggressive, all-or-nothing, borderline reckless.

More so than any athlete in recent memory, Miller's athletic performances match his persona.

So when the pressure of the Olympics began to take its toll, Miller was easy to knock off track. If Miller's drunk-skiing admission didn't tip off people to his potential problems, his November 2005 interview with Newsweek should have. In that interview, unfortunately only recently published, Miller projected the most "epic" failure he could imagine, "For me the ideal Olympics would be to go in with all that pressure, all that attention and have performances that are literally tear-jerking, that make people put their heads down because they're embarrassed at how emotional they're getting, that make people want to try sports, talk to their kids, call their f***ing ex-wives-and come away with no medals."

People who are truly committed to winning don't give voice to fantasies like that - Miller was giving imagination to his own fears, and in doing so set himself up for a fall. I don't believe failure was Miller's plan, but he couldn't imagine anything else for himself, and we were just along for the ride.

Bode Miller will always be remembered as a free spirit, a guy who truly meant it when he said, "Records are less important for me than what if feel when I come down the mountain."

Unfortunately this persona that is so gung ho about life doesn't mesh well with the gung ho ambition that the corporate and Olympic world feeds on.