NBC reporter Christin Cooper went for ratings gold Sunday in Sochi — and failed spectacularly, driving US Olympic skier Bode Miller to tears in a cringe-worthy interview after his bronze medal win in the men’s super-G.
Miller – whose win made him the oldest athlete to win an Olympic alpine medal and the second most-medaled male skier in history – was already emotional after holding on to tie for third place during the hard-fought race when Cooper began hammering him with questions about his little brother, who died last year after a seizure.
As Miller, 36, began to cry, Cooper kept up her uncomfortable line of questioning, pushing Miller to the point where he collapsed in a heap, sobbing uncontrollably.
NBC then trained its cameras, from several angles, on Miller for an excruciating full minute after the interview ended.
By then, the Twitterverse had erupted in fury.
“What I just saw from NBC reporter Christin Cooper interviewing Bode Miller was completely tasteless and unacceptable,” fumed one viewer, with another blasting: “That interview of Bode Miller was the worst thing yet. Shame on you @NBC.”
The tweets kept coming: “Wow, the thing that interviewer just did to Bode Miller was SUPER disgusting,” “There was no journalism in that interview with Bode Miller, just badgering and scrounging,” “Sad that the reporter kept asking Bode Miller q’s after he was emotionally distraught. I know that’s her job, but have some respect…” and “Christin Cooper is as insensitive as they come. A shameful badgering of Bode Miller until he broke down.”
Miller’s 29-year-old snowboarder brother Chelone “Chilly” Miller, was an Olympic hopeful who died in April 2013 from a seizure related to a 2005 head injury. As Miller prepared to ski the super-G, NBC aired a tear-jerker feature segment on the brothers.
Then came Cooper’s interview — conducted more than 12 hours before NBC decided to air the full, tape-delayed trainwreck in prime time Sunday night.
On Monday, the classy Miller tried to quell the uprising, tweeting: “I appreciate everyone sticking up for me. Please be gentle w christin cooper, it was crazy emotional and not all her fault. #heatofthemoment.”
“My emotions were very raw, she asked the questions that every interviewer would have, pushing is part of it,” Miller added. “She wasn’t trying to cause pain.”
Cooper, herself a former Olympic ski medalist, started the interview with a couple of standard questions about what winning the medal meant to Miller.
“This was a little different,” Miller answered. “With my brother passing away, I really wanted to come back here and race the way he sends it. So this was a little different.”
Miller choked up, mentioning that it had been an emotional year – and Cooper charged through the open door. She asked three consecutive questions, steering the talk toward Chelone, as Miller became visibly more uncomfortable and upset.
“Bode, you are showing so much emotion down here. What is going through your mind?” Cooper asked next, apparently not satisfied with his first tearful assessment.
Crafting a narrative, she pressed on: “I know you wanted to be here with Chilly, really experiencing these games and how much does it mean to you to come up with a great performance for him — and was it for him?”
Miller, now crying, struggled to answer, saying it wasn’t for his brother, but that he wanted to make himself proud.
Cooper asked: “When you’re looking up in the sky at the start [of the race] we see you there and it just looks like you’re talking to somebody. What’s going on there?”
That was enough for the skier, who bent over, bowed his head and rested against a fence, clearly overcome.
Cooper could be heard whispering “sorry” as NBC cameras continued to treat the audience to shots of Miller’s anguish from a variety of different angles.
Miller had held the fastest time in the super-G for most of Sunday’s race, before being edged out by Norwegian Ketil Jansrud, who took gold, and US teammate Andrew Weibrecht, who won silver. Canadian Jan Hudec tied with Miller for the bronze medal.
Richard Sandomir of The New York Times called it “overkill,” Kami Mattioli of the Sporting News said Cooper “repeatedly badgered” Miller and the AP’s David Bauder called it “a shameful spectacle.”