New Hampshire’s Bode Miller captured his first Olympic gold medal when he won the super-combined skiing competition in Vancouver on Sunday.
"It was unbelievable,” Miller told NBC’s Christin Cooper after the race. “I couldn't ask for anything more. For my first Olympic gold, it's absolutely perfect."
The gold was Miller’s third medal of the Games, following a silver in the Super-G and a bronze in the downhill. That ties him with Norway’s Kjetil Andrea Aamodt for the most medals by a male Alpine skier in one Olympics in the last 40 years. Aamodt won two silvers and a bronze in Lillehammer in 1994.
Miller found himself in seventh after the downhill portion of the combined, but skied the third-fastest slalom run for a total time of 2 minutes, 44.92 seconds. That put him 0.33 seconds ahead of silver medalist Ivica Kostelic of Croatia and 0.40 seconds ahead of bronze medalist Silvan Zurbriggen of Switzerland.
Norwegian Aksel Lund Svindal, who beat out Miller for gold in the Super-G, was first after the downhill but wiped out at the bottom of the slalom slope and failed to finish.
"It takes a huge amount of mental stamina to race today," Miller said. "Down the last pitch, my legs started to feel real wobbly, I didn't feel like I was even looking at the gates anymore."
Miller now has five career Olympic medals. He won two silvers in Salt Lake City in 2002 but failed to medal in the 2006 Turin Games.
