Up until the point where he skied into the safety fence, things had been going pretty well for Bode Miller. It was his turn on the famed Hahnenkamm course in Kitzbühel, Austria — a World Cup downhill so intimidating that younger racers have been known to lose their nerve and back out of the start house. The treacherous course had already claimed one victim that day last January: American skier Scott Macartney, who had crashed terribly on the final jump and slid unconscious across the finish line.

For the first 27 seconds of his run, Miller attacked the course the way he always does, arcing a series of sweeping turns through the steep upper section. But then he mistimed a series of bumps, which jacked him back on his heels and threw him off balance, sending him careening off course at more than 65 mph.

His first instinct was to reach out and push off the fence with his left hand. Bad idea: He knew that if he did that, his tips would get stuck in the netting and he’d soon join his ex-teammate Macartney in intensive care. Miller quelled that reflex in favor of something just as dicey: He put his left ski on the fence, to brace himself and stay upright.

It worked, until the resulting drag threatened to spin him around into an eggbeater crash that would have ended his season, if not his career. At which point Bode did something only Bode could do: He popped his right ski up onto the fencing as well, regained his balance, and then managed to push himself off, leaping catlike back onto the narrow track as TV announcers shrieked amazement in five languages. Nobody in the World Cup had ever used the safety fence as his own personal halfpipe before.

Miller wasn’t done wowing them yet. Having lost speed on the fence, he hunkered down into his tuck, flattened his skis against the snow, and let gravity pull his bulky frame toward the finish, faster and faster. By the time he rocketed off the final jump — flying the length of a football field through the air ...