Emotions were high on Saturday as U.S. alpine skier Bode Miller tied for a bronze medal in the men's Super-G - and dissolved into tears in a post-race interview with NBC's Christin Cooper. Miller was the first to bring up the April 2013 death of his brother, Chilly, who'd hoped to qualify for the Sochi Olympics in the Snowboard Cross event. He died of a seizure stemming from a head injury sustained in a 2005 motorcycle accident. When Cooper asked Bode how this medal compares to his others, he said it was different because of the loss of his brother: He wanted to come back and race the way his brother would. Cooper noticed Miller getting him emotional and asked him what was going through his mind. Miller said a lot - it'd been a long struggle and a tough year. Cooper said she knew how much he'd wanted to experience the Olympics with his brother and asked what it meant to have such a great performance for him, if it was for him. Miller said he wasn't sure if it was for Chilly, but that he'd wanted to come and - he struggled for words - make himself proud. That's when he had to wipe away the tear we all saw fall.
Cooper could've stopped there - it was clear it was difficult for Miller to speak - but she asked what we all wondered and presumably knew the answer to: "When you're looking up in the sky at the start, we see you there, and it just looks like you're talking to somebody. What's going on there?" Miller just leaned on the fence and cried.
Cooper said sorry, and he collected himself and walked away, only to crouch down until his wife, Morgan Miller, found him, raised him up, and hugged him.
It's worth noting that Morgan has allowed NBC to mic her at Miller's Olympic events in Sochi and that the couple spoke separately to NBC for a package shown earlier in the evening that covered their love story and Chilly's death. (In that, it was Morgan who broke down talking about how the latter had destroyed Bode. But watching him stay strong for his family, she said, made her respect him).
In NBC's late night Olympics coverage, Miller and surprise Super-G silver medalist Andrew Weibrecht, a fellow American, sat down with Matt Lauer, who once again mentioned how emotional Miller had been following the race. Miller explained that he normally doesn't connect his brother and his races in his mind, but today had, in fact, been different. "Today, in the start, I knew it was gonna be a close race. There's not much separating the field in these, and me and my brother had talked about coming to the Olympics here together - he was trying to qualify," Bode said. "Right in the start gate, I was kinda like, 'If you're here with me' - I know I bring a part of him with me everywhere I go - I said, 'give me a couple hundredths today. Just, like, give me that little extra push. I'm gonna be sending it.' Everyone says, 'Send it like Chilly,' that's kinda one of the mottos. I really wanted to ski my best. But I did kinda just connect those two in a way inside. And then for it to come down and be as close as it can possibly get in ski racing and end up with a medal was just kinda, I don't know, it seemed kinda connected. At that point, I was just pretty overwhelmed with the feeling of getting a little bit of help from my brother."
Miller and Canada's Jan Hudec tied for the bronze - only .02 seconds ahead of fourth place finisher Otmar Striedinger of Austria. Miller will ski again Feb. 19 in the men's giant slalom and Feb. 22 in men's slalom. At 36, he told Lauer he believes this is his last Olympics. But, he added, his wife is teasing him that they'll be in Pyeongchang, South Korea in 2018.
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