ESPN Olympic Sports

AP Photo/Rick BowmerBode Miller is attempting to qualify for his fifth Winter Olympics. His first was in 1998.

PARK CITY, Utah -- Though he hasn't competed in more than a year and is the oldest male on the U.S. alpine ski team, Bode Miller didn't exactly mince words when asked Monday about his plans for the upcoming season.

"I'm going to kick ass," Miller said. "That's the gist of it."

The statement was greeted with chuckles from the assembled media at the Olympic media summit, but this was no joke. The man who hasn't competed since microfracture surgery on his left knee in spring of 2012 finds himself refreshed, refocused and reenergized entering what is his fifth and likely last Olympic campaign of his decorated career.

The 35-year-old Miller said Monday that he left his decision to retire entirely to the results of the surgery. If things went well, he planned on skiing again. If they didn't, then that was going to be it. With the surgery a success, he's back for what he said is likely his last competitive season.

"It's perishable being a ski racer," he said. "Until you're rotten and shriveled up, you keep going. I'm pretty shriveled up, but I'm not all the way rotten ... at least not yet."

During his recovery, he spent much of his time on the beaches of Southern California with his wife, Morgan Beck, a professional volleyball player, doing plyometric exercises designed to help slim and strengthen his 6-foot-2 frame. He said he's now 20 pounds lighter than when he last competed, allowing him to be even quicker than he once was.

And, most important, his repaired knee is finally pain-free. Despite being relatively conservative during a recent training session in Portillo, Chile, the early results were promising.

"I didn't take a lot of risk," he said. "One thing during an Olympic season is risk management. It's easy to make stupid mistakes in summer training. But in terms of structure, the knee is perfect. The ligaments are in great shape. The last few days were demanding on the body and I was ready."

He added, "My fitness will be a huge asset for me. It's something that was neglected the past few years, so my plan is to kick ass."

And while doing so, help those who are less fortunate. On Monday, the USOC announced that Miller will be the first athlete ambassador for a new "Gateway to Gold" program designed to introduce people with physical and visual disabilities to Paralympic sports and identify those with the possibility of competing for the U.S. Paralympic Team. It was Miller who sought out USOC CEO Scott Blackmun last year with the goal of improving opportunities in the Paralympic space. The new program will essentially take the core principles of Miller's Turtle Ridge Foundation to a broader audience.

"It's a philosophy that needs a broader audience. It needs more exposure," Miller said. "People get inspiration from watching people deal with these situations and do the incredible. I would not still be racing today had I not gone through that process. It really is something I benefitted from and is really important. I'm thrilled to be part of it and ready to help out."

Fabrice Cofrini/AFP/Getty ImagesA view of the Rosa Khutor Mountain Resort, host to some of the 2014 alpine skiing events.

The Summer Olympics in London may be just around the corner, but American skiers recently got a taste of the slopes above Sochi, site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, when Russia held its first alpine World Cup races this month.

Lindsey Vonn clinched her fifth consecutive World Cup downhill title with a third-place finish there last weekend and Bode Miller finished fourth two weekends ago on what will be the 2014 Olympics downhill course. Miller told reporters at the event that the hill setup and jumps are good, but the course has too many turns.

"The Olympic downhill has to be the real thing and especially when you have such a great venue as this, it would be awesome to showcase it well," he said. "But this is way too turny for a downhill. It's borderline obnoxious for a downhill being that turny. It is tough when they've never run a race before, but I'm sure they're learning as much as we are and I'm sure they'll figure out how to use this terrain and make something special."

Vonn told reporters she liked the race hill.

"It's hard to compare this course to the other courses on the World Cup because it's so unique," she said at a press conference. "The terrain is really cool. It has everything -- side hills, traverses. It has a lot of terrain. It has flats, steeps. It has turns like a super-G, it has big, open turns. It really has everything. I don't think the jumps are too challenging for the women. I think it's good just the way it is."

Sochi is a large resort city of 400,000 on the Black Sea with a very mild winter climate with average temperatures near 50 in February. The Olympic alpine venue is located at the new resort of Rosa Khutor in the mountains above the city.

In an email to reporters, U.S. ski team media representative Doug Haney detailed how arriving there was like landing in a boom of the industrial revolution.

"Sparks flew from all directions as welders blasted train trestles, sky cranes hoisted beams, bus stops were humming. It was 8:30 p.m. Fifty thousand people have been working 'round the clock for the past year and a half building for 2014. Another 25,000 will be added to that number in the next year."

"This is the coolest hill I've ever seen for ski racing -- downhill, super-G -- it doesn't matter,'' Travis Ganong told reporters on the slope. "This hill is just awesome, top to bottom. It has really steep technical sections, really cool rolls and terrain with bank turns, and then big jumps and the mountains around here are gorgeous. The set can probably use some change before the Olympics and they'll work on that in the next couple of years, but in general this is a great hill."