Bode-sattva

Today is the women’s downhill. It will be interesting to see whether NBC airs it live anywhere. I assume that it will not—that it will show an abridged version at 8 P.M. E.T., six or so hours after people, whether they care or not, will have likely learned, via some screen somewhere, if Lindsey Vonn, the heavily favored but lange-bang afflicted American, has won or choked. I’ll be there watching from the side of football jersey the course, which means I’ll probably know less about the results than my colleagues back in New York as they glance at the Captivate screen in the elevator on their way back from lunch. On the course, all you see is racers flashing past, like bullets. The speed is stunning. But data, to say nothing of narrative, is hard to come by.

Even the racers are irked by NBC’s programming choices. After I wrote about the tape-delayed men’s downhill yesterday, a friend, another racing fan, sent in a kind of conspiracy theory:

Perhaps NBC made their decision in part with ill feelings remaining from Italy when they invested oh so much into the hype and anticipation of Bode who chose, as you put it, to revel in the comradery and sportsmanship of the Games rather than to show any effort to return the significant support of nba jerseys NBC, its corporate sponsors, and his own personal boosters. He stole all their money, drank it down in a shot glass without a wince or a chase, and then threw it up in the R.V. toilet come morning. Obviously, I am still bitter about it and I didn’t invest a dime in his ‘06 training. I’d wager NBC’s wounds are deeper than mine.

This may require a little bit of explanation. Miller thumbed his nose at the whole hype machine in at the Turino Olympics in 2006; living in his own R.V., he caroused throughout the Games (“I got to party and socialize at an Olympic level,” he said after failing to finish his final race) and, either consequently or incidentally, didn’t win a medal, even though he was, at the time, probably the best skier in the world. (Burkhard Bilger wrote a great story about Miller back in 2004—subscription required.) He was savaged for this.

At the time, and afterward, I felt the criticism was largely unfair, even though, as a fan of Bode’s (of his iconoclasm, his hippy upbringing, his unorthodox style, his peerless talent, his American-ness), I was disappointed that he hadn’t done better. Still, I argued, half-sincerely, that his disregard for results—his indifference to winning medals—was a kind of necessary corrective to the podium-lust of sponsors, broadcasters, and fans. Brazen as he was, he was trying to teach us a lesson—a sort of Bode-sattva of the hill. It was, in many ways, a purer expression of the Olympic spirit. He came to enjoy the festival, rather than to stock the trophy case.

This argument tends to founder, though, whenever someone, like the friend above, points out that Miller had happily taken tens of soccer uniforms millions of dollars in endorsements leading up to the Games. When the rebel gets rich, something smells.

Bode’s next race is the Super G, on Friday—the super giant slalom, a turnier downhill, basically. He’s got an outside shot. Let’s see if NBC airs it through gritted teeth. This year, he’s living in a house with his teammates, and by all accounts keeping clean. And whaddaya know, he’s already got a bronze.

The civilians of Whistler have picked up the Olympic-level-partying slack. Its carless streets teem with white people getting sauced. Big-screen TVs everywhere play the Games at high volume; being here still means catching it on TV. You can get waylaid; last night, on my way out of town, I again passed the House of Switzerland; the scene was more subdued, but the TVs outside had on the Swiss broadcast, in French, of a hockey game from down in Vancouver (yesterday was day one of the men’s tournament) between the Russians and the Latvians. The Russians, stacked with offensive stars, are the Harlem Globetrotters of these Games. The Latvians were tonight’s Red Klotz. I pulled up a chair to watch a shift or two, and wound up watching the whole thing, with a rotating cast of soccer jerseys passersby stopping by for the Molson and fondue.

This time, on the bus ride home, the drunks were all Canadians. The only cowbell on board belonged to the driver. “We live in the best place in the world, do we not?” one passenger shouted. Cue cowbell.