TORINO: Alpine: Robbie Kristan, serviceman for Bode Miller, talks Olympics

By Published On: February 25th, 2006Comments Off on TORINO: Alpine: Robbie Kristan, serviceman for Bode Miller, talks Olympics

TORINO: Alpine: Robbie Kristan, serviceman for Bode Miller, talks Olympics{mosimage}Robbie Kristan is one of Bode Miller’s servicemen. He tunes Miller’s skis and is often Miller’s go-between with the Atomic factory. Kristan, a former semi-pro basketball player in his native Slovenia, is a close Miller confidant. Ski Racing met with him on Thursday to talk about what a bust the Games were for the overall World Cup champion, whether Miller cares, and whether there were rocks on the Olympic giant slalom course.

Ski Racing: When he catches tips in slalom, is that skis?
Robbie Kristan:
No. It’s the lack of training for slalom. It’s not possible to do it if you run all the races. It’s tough. The other guys are training slalom every week, every couple of days, at least, if not more. But they have time to do it.

SR: A U.S. coach said Miller thinks it’s about the skis.
RK:
The thing is, at the end of the day it comes down to training. He needs a ski that will work for whatever it is he has in his head. If that’s not right there, it’s because we didn’t train enough to figure it out. With the program that goes through the whole season, it’s brutal. Even Benni [Raich] doesn’t do that. … That’s why slalom suffers a little bit.

SR: Is it true that Miller loves slalom?
RK:
Slalom is a discipline you have to train, because it’s so specific. The skis are shorter, with so much more sidecut, and you’re going pretty much just a few mils off the gate. … He’s got a feel for how slalom should be, but with no training you can’t adapt the material you do have. It’s tough.

SR: Does he ever have good slalom runs?
RK:
Every time he pulls the handbrake on, and tries to make it down, he always makes mistakes for some reason. When he lets it go, he’s probably faster than everbody still. The way he can pull a slalom turn, I’ve never seen anyone in my life do the same. Ted [Ligety] is close, but I guarantee if Bode had more training, good training, it would work out. But the way he went on an all five discipline program, I think it doesn’t work for slalom. It’s really tough, because you can’t ski it 10 days in a row, which he’s doing.

SR: Miller damaged his ski in the giant slalom’s first run, and coaches said it was a rock and Guenter Hujara, the referee, said it was hard ice.
RK:
There’s no hard ice that can damage the edge. That’s for sure. If I go with my finger over the edge, you can definitely feel if it got hit by a rock. There’s no ice that can damage an edge that bad. It’s so high up there that the wind blows a lot, and there’s a lot of little rocks that got blown in. I’m not accusing anyone. It’s just unlucky. But for sure, what Guenter said is just not true, because I know what a rock feels like on the edge.

SR: So you fixed the ski?
RK:
Yes. It took me more than an hour to fix that ski. I was just lucky that I didn’t send the thinnest edge out there. I expected that because we had freeskiing on the hill. You don’t see rocks on snow, but when I got the ski back from freeskiing on the hill, I had marks, not big ones, on the edges. I know what I’m talking about when I say he hit the rock. Guenter can say what he wants, but there were rocks out there.

SR: There’s two sides to every story.
RK:
FIS tries to show themselves as a perfect organization.

SR: As someone who knows Miller well, and isn’t an authority figure, where is his head? Is he unhappy about the way the Olympics have gone?
RK:
He showed some good performance in these Olympics. He was a little unlucky in the combined. It was a classic slalom mistake. He performed well in GS, but got unlucky. In speed disciplines, it’s tough to say, but I think his head right now is in the right place.

SR: What about that negative media attention? Does it affect him?
RK:
Not for skiing really. He’s the guy who can separate that. He can separate the life he has outside skiing. … It’s a little much, and that’s why he doesn’t really want to talk to anybody right now. He’s going to have to answer all that shitty questions. … They’re going big on him. Most of the reporters are making such a big deal out of it that it really isn’t. … He reached his biggest goal last year, and the motivation went down a little bit for sure. But this press thing went way up high, like totally. That’s how it is, when somebody doesn’t do as well as everybody expects.

SR: At the Olympics, or in general?
RK:
In general. That guy is not really as perfect as you think, but who is perfect? Nobody. … For races, it definitely doesn’t affect him that much. … He’s not going to say something just to please somebody. He’s who he is, and he never hides that. And that’s a good quality.

SR: Will he stay like that?
RK:
Yeah. Yeah. Somebody’s going to have to back off one day, and he’s not going to. Because he is who he is.

SR: But it appears that he didn’t try very hard at these Games.
RK:
That’s not true. Name one day that he didn’t perform well. Name it. And be honest. He had good splits everywhere. It just didn’t come together. He had good stuff in every race, so you can’t really say he didn’t try. Because I tell you he did.

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