By Tim Layden

WHISTLER, British Columbia -- Bode Miller's record-breaking bronze medal in Wednesday's Olympic downhill was even more impressive than it initially appeared. Hours after the race, Miller's uncle, Mike Kenney, who is also a coach with the U.S. Ski Team, told SI.com that Miller had undergone arthroscopic knee surgery shortly after Christmas, barely seven weeks before Monday's race. Miller's agent, Lowell Taub, confirmed the surgery in an email exchange on Tuesday.

"We were fighting injuries for six weeks," said Kenney, who said the surgery was on either Dec. 26 or 27. First, Miller suffered a sprained ankle on Dec. 12, while playing volleyball with teammates the evening after Miller finished ninth in a Super-G race in Val d'Isere, France. Miller raced three more times with that injury -- Dec. 18 and 19 in Val Gardena, Italy and Dec. 20 in Alta Badia, Italy. After those races, Miller left the World Cup and returned to the United States.

At the time of Miller's departure, U.S. team officials emphasized that he was taking a break to rest his ankle and improve his overall fitness, having begun conditioning for the season only in late September, much later than usual. "It gives him some time to do a conditioning block," United States head coach Sasha Rearick told the AP in December. "He was doing a lot of conditioning, but once we get into all these races, it's hard to hold onto that."

However, Kenney said that Miller also underwent an arthroscopic procedure on his right knee within a week after leaving Europe. "He was having a lot of discomfort in there, so he had the surgery," said Kenney. "To clean some things up."

Remarkably, Miller returned to the World Cup circuit barely two weeks after surgery, finishing 14th in a slalom race in Adelboden, Switzerland on Jan. 10. Even more impressively, five days after that -- less than three weeks out from surgery -- Miller won his only Word Cup race of the current season (the 32nd of his career, more than any U.S. skier in history), when he took first in a super combined event at Wengen, Switzerland.

Miller raced four times in the ensuing eight days on classic -- and demanding -- courses at Wengen and Kitzbuehel, before shutting down his racing schedule. He did not race for 22 days between the Kitzbuehel downhill on Jan. 23 and the Olympic downhill on Feb. 15, although he trained consistently over that period.

Miller did not mention the procedure in any of his media appearances between the surgery and the Olympics, and did not mention it in numerous interviews after winning his bronze medal, which made him the first U.S. ski racer in history to win three Olympic medals. His approach contrasts with that of presumptive women's star Lindsey Vonn, who disclosed a severe shin injury two days before the Opening Ceremony. In fairness, Vonn's was a traumatic injury close to the start of the Olympics.

"Bode has been scoped many times over the past 10 years," Taub, Miller's longtime agent, wrote in an email to SI.com. "He has also not made it a point to discuss injuries with the press and potentially use them as an excuse."

Miller, 32, has pounded his body into numerous injuries over his 13-year career. He needed microfracture surgery on his left knee after tearing his ACL in a brutal combined downhill crash at the 2001 World Alpine Championships in St. Anton, Austria. During his troubled 2006 Olympic season, he was dogged by back and knee pain, and last year he suffered a December ankle injury that followed him throughout the World Cup.

But on Monday, he won his first Olympic medal in eight years by skiing sensationally on the upper portions of the Dave Murray Downhill course and holding himself together on the lower parts, while skiing in dark shade. (The gold and silver medalists, Didier Defago of Switzerland and Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway, benefited from sunlight over the lower half of the course).

"Bode did some great skiing at the top," said Kenney, who has coached his nephew on-snow and off-snow at various points in his career. "Not so great at the bottom. But it was great to see the way he skied. Ski racing is fun for Bode. He found something out there."