Wengen: Bode Miller, Head confident in binding

Bode Miller wants to finish his next race with both skis.
    His right ski popped off at a race last week, but the American won’t change his bindings for Sunday’s World Cup slalom.
WENGEN, Switzerland — Bode Miller wants to finish his next race with both skis.
    His right ski popped off at a race last week, but the American won’t change his bindings for Sunday’s World Cup slalom.
    Miller’s ski company developed a new setup for him after the toe of his right boot came loose from its binding during the slalom at Adelboden last Sunday. However, poor snow conditions at Wengen have made testing impossible.
    Overnight rain and warm weather wiped out Friday’s super combi and organizers barred everyone from the course in the hopes of preserving it for the traditional Lauberhorn downhill on Saturday. The slalom, on a separate but equally fragile course, is slated for Sunday.
    “We are now testing a new binding setup for Bode,” said Rainer Salzgeber, who works for Head — the company that makes Miller’s skis. “It’s here and he could change it for Sunday’s slalom, but with the snow conditions here he just couldn’t test them.
    “And he doesn’t just want to race on the new setup without testing it first.”
    Salzgeber doubted the binding would fail for a second time.
    “It shouldn’t happen again. Bode has done a lot of runs with that setup before and the ski never came off,” he said. “If it does, I’ll go to the casino and win some money there for sure. We’ll have broken all the odds.”
    Last Sunday, Miller was sitting 11th after the opening leg and looked poised to finish a World Cup slalom for the first time in almost a year when his ski simply popped off midway down the second run.
    While Miller places unusual stress on his bindings, video reviews seem to indicate it was simply bad luck.
    “The binding was OK, it wasn’t damaged,” Salzgeber said. “It’s difficult to say what happened. Bode says he doesn’t really know and we don’t have high-speed video footage of the incident.
    “But in the regular video, the gate seems to hit the boot, or maybe the binding, and the boot went a little off center and the next turn it came off.”
    The last time Miller completed a slalom was Jan. 22 at Kitzbühel, Austria, where he finished 18th.
    The 29-year-old American has completed only three of his last 19 World Cup slalom races. He hasn’t won a slalom since Dec. 13, 2004, in Sestriere, Italy.
    “It would have been perfect if he could have finished in Adelboden,” Salzgeber said. “There would have been points. He’d be back among the top 30 in the standings which means a better starting number. It would have made things better for him in slalom.”
    Seeded skiers get earlier start numbers and benefit from cleaner, smoother course conditions on race day.
    In his WCSN diary, Miller said he didn't understand what happened.
    “It wasn’t cold enough for any serious ice build-up under my boot. I might have clipped a gate,” he wrote. “I was in the middle of a turn, didn’t hit a bump or anything, the ski just dropped off my foot.”
    Miller called the incident a “heartbreaker.”
    “I felt I could have won it. We’ve been slowly chipping away at the problems with my slalom setup and we’ve made huge progress. This felt like the first time I had it all together all season.”

— Erica Bulman, The Associated Press