14 DAY TRIAL // Star Olympic skier Bode Miller tells us how he really feels about Russia's ban on allowing gay athletes to take part in the Olympiad.
Bode Miller has already racked up four Olympic medals and he is gunning for a fifth one. He has spoken out against the Russian anti-gay law, blasting it as ignorant and unfair.
“I think it is absolutely embarrassing there are countries and people who are that intolerant or that ignorant,” he said during the U.S. Olympic media summit on Monday.
According to the Chicago Tribune, he hints that human rights organizations should deal with the issue.
“It’s not the first time. We have been dealing with human rights issues since there were humans,” he adds.
He continues and claims that, as an athlete himself, knowing the amount of work and preparation that goes into training, he feels embarrassed for Russia's decision.
“My main emotion when I hear and deal with situations like that is embarrassment. As a human being, I think it is embarrassing,” he says.
He also takes on how other athletes are prohibited from discussing the issue at the Olympics. He calls out the practice as “hypocritical and unfair.”
“There are politics in sport and athletics. They always are intertwined, even though people try to keep them separate.
“Asking an athlete to go somewhere and compete and be a representative of that philosophy and all the different [expletive] that kind of goes along with it and then telling them they can’t tell them they express their views or they can’t say what they believe is pretty hypocritical and unfair,” he points out.
35-year-old Miller is aiming to be a member of the U.S. team for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
The Russian anti-gay attack has been criticized before, but no athlete has taken such as a strong stand against it until now.