Bode Miller
ALL DOWNHILL: Skier Bode Miller (inset) won his bid to have his child-custody battle against Sara McKenna (above yesterday) moved to California. (
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Olympic gold- medal skier Bode Miller can make it down a mountain in record time, but he can’t make it to New York to fight for his son.
Miller, 35, won a legal victory against baby mama Sara McKenna yesterday when a Manhattan Family Court referee granted his request to move custody proceedings from New York to California, where the star athlete lives with his wife, professional volleyball player Morgan Beck.
The decision will mean the single mom, who says Miller originally wanted her to have an abortion, has to give up a scholarship at Columbia University to battle the millionaire downhill racer for custody of 3-month-old Samuel Bode Miller McKenna.
“I feel like I’m being punished for not having an abortion and trying to better my life and the life of my child,” said McKenna, 27, who described herself as a devout Catholic.
McKenna showed The Post text messages she said Miller sent her.
“I’m not going to do this with u Sara. U made this choice against my wish, and gave me no say. U are going to do this on your own,” read one message, sent after he found out she was pregnant last June and allegedly asked her to have an abortion.
McKenna noted she was already $35,000 in debt from legal bills.
“I can’t afford to be flying back and forth to California,” she said.
A former Marine, McKenna left her native California for New York last year while pregnant to pursue a law degree on the GI Bill.
Manhattan Family Court referee Fiordaliza Rodriguez ruled yesterday that McKenna’s “appropriation of a child while in utero was irresponsible and reprehensible.”
Rodriguez sided with the five-time Olympic medalist even though he has never met the child and didn’t try to visit him when he was signing autographs in upstate New York in February, just five days after the baby’s birth in Manhattan, court records show.
Rodriguez said McKenna will have to battle Miller in a California court, after calling his attorney’s argument “more persuasive.”
Miller’s lawyer, Barbara Schaffer, had said an East Coast proceeding would be too burdensome for Miller.
“How can an unmarried pregnant woman be penalized for moving from California to New York to attend Columbia University on the GI Bill?” her lawyer, Kenneth Eiges, said in dismay after leaving court. He plans to appeal.
The petite blonde served at Camp Pendleton in the Marine Corps for four years and was honorably discharged in 2011. In her second career as a firefighter, she was designated a Hero of the Year by the Defense Department in 2011 for rushing into a burning building alone to save a little girl.
McKenna chose Columbia because the Ivy League provides special support for students who are veterans and mothers.
Still, Referee Rodriguez called McKenna’s explanations for leaving California “unavailing” and determined that the court battle must be exclusively in California because that’s where Miller started a paternity proceeding last fall. McKenna said she wasn’t aware of the case because he served her with the legal papers at an old address.
Miller’s attorney, declined to comment.