Bode Miller does Bill Belichick one better.
No, it's not about setting records. It's not about religiously avoiding looking past the next competition. To Miller, it's not even about winning - at least not as a primary focus.
"I like to be skiing the best I can," said Miller by phone from Switzerland, where Sunday he tied Phil Mahre, the winningest American skier of all time, with his 27th World Cup victory. "If I'm skiing the way I really want to be, and I eliminate mistakes, the results will take care of themselves."
Miller was having dinner in his motor home, relaxed in the company of his pal, Jake Serino - driver and cook - and other members of Team America, the alternative team he formed this year after separating from the US Ski Team, of which he had been a member for 10 years.
And though his start to this World Cup season, in North American venues of Lake Louise in Alberta and Beaver Creek, Colo., lacked the punch of other seasonal openings, Miller denies that his new arrangement was a distraction or even that his racing has been substandard.
"I was skiing great in the beginning of the season," said the 30-year-old native of Franconia, N.H., and alumnus of Maine's Carrabassett Valley Academy. "The skiing I was doing in Beaver Creek and the skiing I was doing up at Lake Louise and the skiing I was doing in Solden [Austria] was nothing different from the way I'd been doing the last 10 years.
"When I don't make mistakes, I have lots of speed, and over the last five or six years when I've been able to eliminate mistakes, my skiing has been great. The beginning of this season was kind of a flashback to that time before I had eliminated a lot of mistakes that cost me huge amounts of time."
Miller's win, his second straight on the Lauberhorn course in Wengen, Switzerland, not only tied him with Mahre - who retired after winning the giant slalom gold medal at the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo - but put him eighth on the all-time World Cup list.
Miller could move up a couple of notches on that list, but will undoubtedly remain locked up with Austria's Benny Raich, who is just about Miller's age and stands sixth with 30 wins.
Miller's race Sunday demonstrated all facets of ski racing - fast technical turns, slow turns and flats, and the longest course by half a minute on the World Cup tour. And to Miller, through the whole range of terrain, there was one imperative:
"To keep pushing forward the whole time. It was fun but it didn't feel that good in terms of quality of skiing, but I was very aggressive all the way. There wasn't much braking."
Nor was Miller's milestone win contested by the rest of the pack. His downhill win in 2 minutes 30.40 seconds was .65 seconds faster than Swiss veteran Didier Cuche, considered a wide margin in ski racing.
On the straightaway where racers accelerate to speeds as high as 94 miles per hour, Miller was slightly slower than Cuche, and at the first split he trailed Canada's Manuel Osborne-Paradis by two-10ths.
But on a long section of gliding on the flats, Miller pulled away, explaining afterward how he took advantage of the slower speed sections of the course by taking a straighter line.
"I just cut off a lot of distance," said Miller, who gave a fist pump at the finish.
Miller is now second in World Cup points (611) behind Raich, who does not compete in downhill.
After his win Sunday, Miller told the Associated Press that he felt as if he were "the best American skier ever," and that "it's nice to have the numbers to back it up."
But somewhat less impressed is Mahre, now 50, who runs a ski camp at Deer Valley, Utah. He can't believe his record has stood this long.
"I can't believe it took more than 20 years," Mahre told the Salt Lake Tribune Monday. "It's ridiculous."
Mahre has been critical of Miller's unorthodox, go-for-broke style, and now says, "[Miller] should probably have 50 [wins] by now."
Still speaking in chippy tones about Miller, with veiled reference to his well-publicized lifestyle, especially at the Turin Olympics, Mahre said, "You'd like to have a little better representative for the sport. He has drawn some negative press with his actions, but that isn't to say he hasn't done some good."
Somewhat lost in the wake of Miller's downhill win is that he placed fifth in a slalom two days before - a discipline he has struggled with in recent years.
"Well, a fifth isn't exactly great, but I feel like my slalom is getting where I'd like it," said Miller, who has won an overall World Cup title, three World Cup discipline titles, two Olympic silver medals, and four world championship gold medals.
And of the Mahre record he may surpass as early as this weekend with three races in Kitzbuhel, Austria, Miller admits his team has taken note.
"It's something that we've talked about a little bit," he said. "I'm certainly aware of it. But there's no way you can go for it, like other sports when you're trying to beat a record. You just go out there every day and do what you have to do, and hopefully it happens."
Bill Belichick couldn't have said it better.
