It’s been an unusually rough Winter Olympics for American skier Bode Miller. Miller failed to medal through the first week of competition in Sochi, but he finally found his way to the podium Sunday.
Miller took bronze in the men’s super-G competition, finishing tied with Canada’s Jan Hudec, who also got a bronze medal behind gold medalist Kjetil Jansrud of Norway and U.S. teammate Andrew Weibrecht, who won silver.
Miller had disappointing runs to start the Winter Games, coming in sixth place in the super combined, and eighth in the men’s downhill competition. The New Hampshire native sat out the entire 2013 ski season recovering from a knee injury, and he hadn’t won a race in more than two years, so Miller placed some emphasis on the super-G race.
“If it’s not the most important race of my life, it’s right there with it,” Miller said, via USA Today. “I had a lot to show today.”
And show it, he did. Miller skied almost with reckless abandon Sunday, risking it all and just barely keeping it all together to reach the finish line, capturing his sixth Olympic medal — a record for U.S. skiers.
“I put in a lot of work,” Miller said. “This was a really hard year. It was a lot of effort coming back to get fit and get ready and just battle through what life throws at you sometimes. To come out and ski hard, it is almost therapeutic for me to be in these situations where I really have to test myself.”
At 36 years old, Miller became the oldest Olympian to win a medal in alpine skiing.
Photo via Twitter/@nycjim
