Marco Sullivan is from California, and he sounds like it, too, speaking as he does with a surfer-like drawl while giving off the air of absolute mellowness. 

Sullivan does have a pulse. He is an American ski racer, after all, and his easy-going California manner will grow more animated if you get him telling stories about his teammate, Bode Miller. 

Miller, you see, is not just any another ski racer. He is one of a kind. He is Bode Miller. And his kamikaze plunges down World Cup mountainsides are among the finest examples of what it means to ski on the edge -- either finishing first or finishing tangled up in a safety net with a face full of snow.

"My most memorable moment of Bode on a race course was in 2002," Sullivan says. "He had one of the most amazing slalom runs I have ever seen. He came back, and I think he won the run by over two seconds. I can still remember that run. It was awesome."

Miller wrote in his autobiography a few years back that his sole purpose in racing was not necessarily to win medals but to "ski as fast as the natural universe will allow."

"I would hate to be one of the guys that is up there racing with their head fully running the show," Miller says. "Just tactically making decisions, and just looking like they are going to work every day -- and just skiing to just get their result and just come back the next day."

Alas, the skier he did not want to be was the racer Miller found himself becoming during the 2009 World Cup season. 

Instead of skiing on the edge he started playing it safe until he quit playing altogether last February, abandoning the worst season of his professional career a few weeks after the world championships. Miller hinted at retirement at the time, suggesting the "fire" was gone, and he left the circuit trailing rumours he would not be coming back.

"I started to feel like I was being dragged into the other side of things, by myself, because I had so much tactical information," Miller says. "I re-watched the whole world championships after I stopped, in the middle of the summer, and I didn't see one inspiring run from the guys the whole time. Even the gold medal-winning runs weren't inspiring."

Even Bode, it seemed, was boring, one thing he had never been. The 32-year-old has captured two overall World Cup titles, two Olympic silver medals (2002) and more World Cup races than any other American (32).

He has feuded with the American skiing establishment, spent a season competing under his own personal flag and spoke openly on 60 Minutes about the hazards of skiing drunk. 

Miller is a character, a clown prince, and skiing on the edge was always part of his charm. Without it, he was just another guy in a skintight racing suit.

After stepping away from the slopes, and spending time with his young daughter, Miller decided to return. The Olympics were a major factor in the decision. A gold medal is one of the few prizes the daredevil has not won. 

Miller is in Whistler now, lugging around the bum ankle he hurt playing volleyball in December. He says the pain is manageable. 

But what would be unbearable would be leaving his sport -- and the Olympics -- without skiing like only Bode Miller can. 

"One of the things that is most important to me about skiing and about my legacy -- if I would call it that -- is racing for the pure enjoyment of racing fast and not getting too tangled up in the results and the outcomes," Miller says. "Obviously, you always want to win, but do you want to win by skiing a race that you are proud of, and that you feel like you really challenged yourself, and left it all out there?"