Bode-audacious

Even at the start, Boder Miller resisted boundaries. Here he was, barely two years old, coasting downhill on tiny skis between the legs of his mother, Jo, while she dug a wide wedge and supported him with her arms. "Let go! Let go!" squawked little Bode, fighting for his freedom. After two runs his mom relented, turned her toddler loose and hurtled toward the base of the run, "trying to get to the bottom before Bode got there and crashed into the fence," she recalls. This scene would be repeated, in one form or another, for more than two decades. Bode does things his way, in life and in skiing. Sometimes he wins, sometimes he crashes.

Armed with a self-taught, attacking style that confounded the boyhood coaches who tried to change him, Bode (pronounced BOH-dee) hopped mountains and trained with a rival team at age 13-It probably cost him a place in the 1990 Junior Olympics. Five years later he challenged a Carrabassett Valley (Maine) Academy English teacher's requirements for a senior paper. It definitely cost him a high school diploma. "People have tried to get Bode to fit in or to jump through hoops," says Chip Cochrane, who coached Miller at CVA. "He's not a hoop-jumper."

Yet he never doubted his decisions, and when he wins, he wins big. In 1996, when Miller was 18, representatives for the ski manufacturer K2, which was supplying his equipment, initially advised him not to race in their production model K2 Fours, the first generation of revolutionary side-cut skis, because they were made to aid recreational skiers in carving turns. Miller saw the skis as perfect for his unusual racing style; using them, he won the Junior Olympics Super G and giant slalom and, despite falling three times, finished second in the slalom. Shortly afterward, on the same K2 Fours, he finished third in the slalom at the nationals and was added to the U.S. ski team.

He has been on the team ever since. It has been a stubborn, rollicking ride, six years during which Miller, 24, has held to his technique and his aggression like a pit bull to a chew toy. "It must be incredibly frustrating to work with me," says Miller. "Even if a coach has what he thinks is a great point, I usually don't agree with him, and there's no way to convince me."

Miller flashed moments of greatness during his first five years on the World Cup circuit, six times winning one run of a two-run race but never a full race. This season he has exploded, winning four World Cup races (three in the slalom, one in the GS), the most by any U.S. male since Phil Mahre won six races two decades ago. Miller's performances have made him an Olympic medal favorite in die technical events, and his hellbent, swashbuckling style—along with his cuddly name and slacker cool—have made him an instant legend across Europe. At a low-key night slalom race on Jan. 17 in Westendorf, Austria, Miller stood for two hours on a frigid snowpack, signing autographs and posing for pictures. Three days later, in the ski mecca of Kitzbühel, he finished third in a World Cup slalom despite shearing off the bottom five inches of one of his ski poles at the top of the first run.

After a December slalom win at Madonna di Campiglio, Alberto Tomba, five-time Olympic medalist in slalom and GS, told journalists, "There's no way to beat Bode Miller right now. He's skiing better than anybody in the world."

More significant, the risk-taking style that Miller developed and has been defending since he was a teenager—skiing straighter and faster than any racer in the world, carving earlier in sharp turns, sitting back on his skis and rescuing himself from myriad near falls—is being described as the stuff of genius. "He's creating more speed from his skis than I've seen," says U.S. teammate Erik Schlopy, with whom Miller shares a winter house in Austria. The mighty Austrians (the New York Yankees of Alpine skiing) have taken to watching videos of Miller, trying to unlock the source of his unorthodox brilliance.

The success and the props give Miller ample opportunity to crow. Ever the New England contrarian, he instead rips himself. "It's great that I'm finally doing this," he says, "but I've had this ability for years. My success rubs it right in my face that I haven't done it sooner."

Start with nearly 500 acres on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest near Franconia, N.H. Add a rustic ski lodge, built in 1946 by Miller's grandfather Jack Kenney. Add another home, three quarters of a mile from the nearest access road, nestled in dense pines beside a stream. No electricity. No indoor plumbing. This is where Samuel Bode Miller was born in the fall of 1977, the second of four children of Jo Kenney and Woody Miller, a '60s couple who were headed toward conformity before Woody dropped out of medical school in Burlington, Vt., in 1974 and moved with Jo to the woods. "At that point in our lives it was important to live simply," says Jo, 51.

Bode got his name because Jo thought the letter combination was neat. His older sister is Kyla, 26, who's married with one child and expecting a second. Bode and Kyla helped name the two younger kids, piling on name after name until their sister's and brother's birth certificates were filled with clerk's keystrokes. (The 18-year-old baby is Nathaniel Kinsman Ever Skan Chelone Miller.) The family home was lit by kerosene lamps, and the children were homeschooled until Bode was through third grade. When snow fell on nearby Cannon Mountain, they went skiing. Theirs was a lifestyle that encouraged independence. "Bode—and all my children—were strong-willed from an early age," says Jo.