HoliMont and Bode Miller Mingled
Greatness Coming Face to Face with Greatness

By Dan Balkin

   Sometimes greatness comes face to face with greatness.  Such is our tale involving alpine ski racing legend Bode Miller and HoliMont.  Why is Bode great?  Six Olympic medals; World Cup Champion in 2005 and 2008; 33 World Cup victories; the only skier ever to have five or more victories in each alpine racing discipline.  He met a man from HoliMont named Mike Holden – who is now in the presence of God – and a former HoliMont instructor and a U.S. Ski Team coach.  As a child, Mike was evacuated from London during Hitler’s WWII bombing blitz.  He later earned a PHD in Aerospace Engineering and emigrated to the USA.  How bright was Mike?  He was sometimes asked to give the keynote address at Rocket Scientist conventions.  One winter Saturday, before the era of cell phones, a call came from NASA to the Snowsports office at HoliMont.  Due to some concern, they were frantically looking for Mike because they wanted his opinion about whether the Space Shuttle could be safely launched.   Summoned off the slopes, Mike had an extended conversation with NASA officials in our Snowsports office and the Space Shuttle safely launched later that day.

   Bode had a full-time gig, and Mike had a part-time gig – skiing.  Mike was devoted to aerospace engineering, but in the winter, he was often on the slopes.  He lived in a suburb of Buffalo and worked for a firm, that among other things, devised hypersonic missiles for the U.S. military.  At his office, there was a wind tunnel built in the 50s that was now obsolete – sort of.  Mike got permission from the company’s CEO to retrofit the wind tunnel (at his own expense) with equipment that could determine the aerodynamic drag Downhill ski racers encountered.  That is how he earned his stripes to be named as a coach for the U.S. Ski Team.  For decades, U.S. Ski Team legends such as Barbara Cochran, Bill Johnson, and Ted Ligety, among others, flocked to Buffalo to work with Mike in the wind tunnel.  Then the call came.  HoliMont instructor Ward Wilson had a close friendship with Mike.  Mike contacted Ward to tell him Bode Miller was flying into Buffalo in a few days, and he could drop by and meet him.  Thrills don’t captivate us every day, and Ward jumped at this opportunity.   Ward said that inside the wind tunnel, a pair of Downill skis with adjustable bindings were affixed to the floor.  The Ski Team members would bring everything else they would use on race day.  Bode entered the wind tunnel and clicked into the skis.  Mike wore a microphone that was hooked up to the earbuds that Bode was wearing under his helmet.  Mike, being brilliant, devised instruments to calculate the aerodynamic drag a Downhill racer encountered in their “tuck” position.  The wind tunnel could be revved up to make the racers encounter wind speeds of up to 80mph, the approximate maximum speed a Downhill ski racer can achieve.  Mike would then instruct the racers to make minor adjustments to their hand position, where they were placing their ski poles, moving their arms slightly in or out etc., until they had perfected a tuck that minimized their aerodynamic drag.  Bode was in place, and Mike showed Ward how to operate the controls that slowly increased the wind to 80mph.  Bode was now under the full force of the wind.  At that precise moment, a colleague of Mike’s entered the room housing the wind tunnel and started frantically motioning for Mike to follow him.  Maybe another urgent call from the government?  Mike left the room and Ward watched for about fifteen seconds as Bode was straining under the 80mph wind with no words from Mike.  

   Suddenly, Bode tilted his head toward Ward with a quizzical look.  Ward shrugged his shoulders and extended his hands outward in body language to express “I don’t know where he went either!”  Fortunately, Mike soon returned, and this time the session went on without a glitch.  Afterwards, Mike, Bode, and Ward went out to lunch.  Intrigued, I asked Ward if Bode ate a health-conscious meal?  Ward said Bode enjoyed a cheeseburger, fries, and Coca Cola.  Life is good.