“The people in horse racing don’t see it at all. They think it’s crazy, they think it’s like voodoo and magic, and for us it’s just normal stuff.”
In Miller’s experience, success can be achieved by the smallest of margins.
Winless for two years and dogged by injury, it was a heart-in-mouth moment when he roared down the mountain at February’s Sochi Winter Games in a final attempt to add to his Olympic medal tally.
“I’ve always been very scientific in my approach — in Sochi I changed from using a rubber goggle strap to a plastic strap because research showed it would save me one-hundredth of a second,” he explained at the premier of a new documentary “Quest for the Future,” about life after skiing.
“I took bronze by one-hundredth of a second!”
Miller’s “leave-no-stone-unturned” attitude has served him well.
He was famously one of the first athletes to break away from the U.S. ski team — and be successful.
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The high-octane world of flat racing holds no such risks for Miller, only tantalizing rewards.
And as he moves into his twilight years on the snow, this workhorse has a feeling the turf will suit him just fine.
“I can stay focused on something indefinitely for as long as it needs to happen, and I love that horses are the same way,” he says.
“When you put a horse to task they do what you ask them to every time, so building a scenario which helps them to peak at the right time is really appealing to me. It’s exactly what we do in ski racing.”
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