“Every athlete who aspires to be the best should have a voice in how to go about it. This not only gives them ownership of their destiny but gives them a chance to think through and experiment with what their mind and body can do. When Bode was at CVA, he lived this philosophy and made me a believer. The freedom to be who you are is an important requirement for an athlete and one we provide here at CVA as long as it covers the realm of self-respect, respect for others and others property. Bode did it here, and so can you!
What I learned from Bode was that when a kid is thinking for himself, you don't want to shut that down. A skier has to be self-reliant to make a career of the sport. Ultimately the athlete has to drive himself down the hill. All kids want some guidance, but a lot think someone's going to pass the magic wand. I tell them it doesn't work that way. My job is just to try to boost their confidence in themselves”, Chip Cochrane, CVA coach and advisor to Bode Miller and 2006-07 USSA Development Coach of the Year.
As much as Cochrane doesn't like to talk about himself, he's animated when talking about the athletes he coaches. His voice lights up with relief when he's invited to speak about what Miller was like at 15 -- with bad points and untuned skis. "He was quite typical of a young, skinny J II: fairly impressionable. He didn't have a lot of strength to back up his talent. As he got stronger, he got better," recalls Cochrane.
But when Bode Miller wins a World Cup, goes to the post-race press conference and is asked which coaches have had the biggest effect on him, Miller -- who is not known for celebrating the coaching profession -- goes out of his way to credit Cochrane for guiding him through his uncertain CVA years.
Cochrane is big on weight training, but Miller, who has always been more into alternative workouts, resisted that. Cochrane says he wasn't worried, because Miller made up for it with intensity during soccer games. "We were always playing football and soccer and ice hockey," says Cochrane. "We'd play till we could barely stand up."
Miller's teachers weren't as lenient with him in the classroom as Cochrane was in the weightroom. But Cochrane stood up for Miller. "He recognized Bode's genius," says Headmaster John Ritzo, who thinks Cochrane's background was the lens through which he could see Miller's promise.
"When he made breakthroughs," remembers Cochrane, "he was there. He'd never step back. It would take awhile, and it would take a lot of crashing -- he'd go months without getting down the course -- but he'd be working on something and [then] ... he'd get it, and he'd ski down to us coaches at the bottom of the hill and say 'I figured it out,' and it would be something we'd told him a month ago. All that crashing, but he'd never let failure hurt his ego. He always stayed on track. Not much gets to him mentally. He's had that from the beginning. It's hard to pull any psyches on him. He can do it to himself, I suppose, but there were a lot of times where I thought he should be nervous but he wasn't."
Cochrane's voice emphasizes his respect for Miller. The respect is mutual. "Chip was just really
understanding," says Miller. "He never tried to force anything on anyone, he was one of those coaches who tries to inspire you to figure it out on your own rather than tell you what to do or boss you around. Plus, he'd had some experience on the World Cup level and that's invaluable when you're teaching young kids, because you know what it takes to get there, the commitment and effort. He was really supportive in a really healthy way for me."
People at CVA say Cochrane gives the same measured attention to every athlete, no matter how fast or committed that athlete appears. Ritzo believes that Cochrane's experience on the World Cup wrung the glamour out of U.S. Ski Team uniforms and that as a result, Cochrane never gets "star struck." Forest Carey agrees. Carey, a CVA alum who spent time on the U.S. Ski Team and then at Middlebury College before returning, last year (he’s now Bode’s coach), to coach alongside Cochrane, says Cochrane will never play the Bode Miller card to win an athlete's respect. "When he does tell kids about Bode, he tells them about all the stuff we did -- the big air and skiing fast," says Carey. "But he never, ever tells the kids, 'I told Bode this and look at him now.' It's never put before them in that way. Never."
Cochrane is a Registered Maine Guide (a prestigious accreditation in the North Woods), which means that in summer he's qualified to take hundreds of wide-eyed neophytes down the state's wild and remote rivers. Guests rave about his irrepressible desire to teach canoeing to anyone willing to learn. Perhaps that natural gift partly explains why Cochrane hasn't sought out coaching certification through USSA. Other coaches with his same successes at the junior level try to ascend the coaching hierarchy. Cochrane appears to coach just for the thrill of introducing someone to new territory. "Teaching kids to race," he says, "that's enough for me."
Thousands of students have passed through Cochrane's life on the river and slopes, but he still vividly remembers the day that Miller made the U.S. Ski Team on objective criteria -- by placing at Nationals (held at Sugarloaf that year). "He had so much confidence on his home hill," says Cochrane. "During the warm-up he was on fire, and he came to me and said, 'Chip, I feel good today. I think I'll make the ski team today.' And he was starting, I don't know, 57th or something like that."
Cochrane was happy to see Miller make it, but had some reservations. "I was on the ski team myself, and I saw how that worked. I told Bode that there were coaches there that want to ride the athletes to the top, and Bode doesn't like that. But I think Bode knew all of that, could see it for himself."
Cochrane was worried that Miller's independent thinking wouldn't synchronize with the USST's highly managed schedule, obligatory goals and expectations. And he was worried that people in the sport would try to "puppet Bode around." So he wrote a long letter to the coaches who were about to receive Miller, Aldo Radamus (now program director at Ski Club Vail) and Jesse Hunt (now the alpine director, a front-office job at USSA headquarters).
"I sent a long letter to Jesse and Aldo, discussing how I thought Bode saw the sport. I didn't want to tell them how to do their jobs, but I said if they were thinking they'd be able to re-write and re-program Bode, it wouldn't work, because Bode doesn't learn that way."
It surely ran against Cochrane's low-key style to write such a letter, but the action was in keeping with what athletes and co-workers appreciate most about Cochrane. He's genuine and has his athletes' best interest in mind. Always. "He [coaches] for all the right reasons," explains Carey. "There's a political game that comes into play in any job, and Chip ignores it."
He's also humble. "I passed on my two cents' worth, and they took it," says Cochrane, downplaying the importance of the prescient advice. "I think they had some of those ideas already. I think Jesse and Aldo had seen Bode around."
He doesn't talk much, but Cochrane, like Miller, isn't afraid to let his opinions be known. If an idea touches him off, the audience is in for a thoughtful, well-articulated theory. So it is when you broach the subject of Bode Miller with him.
Credit: Ski Racing Magazine, "Guiding light: How coach Chip Cochrane kept the USST's biggest rebel on track", by Nathaniel Vinton.
