Athlete Bios
Snowboarding
Clark looks to strike gold after 8 long years
Last Updated: Friday, February 5, 2010 | 4:21 PM ET
New York Times for CBC Sports
American Kelly Clark won a gold medal in the women's halfpipe at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. (Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)It was eight years ago that Kelly Clark won the Olympic gold medal in the women’s halfpipe at the Salt Lake Games. In snowboarding years, eight is a long, long time.
Still, 26-year-old Clark is coming off the best season of her career in 2008-09, when she competed in 16 events and never finished lower than second. She was the overall champion on the Ticket to Ride world tour, which is considered the most prestigious season-long title.
“It was really an amazing season,” Clark said in an interview in October. “I didn’t expect, at age 26, to have the best year of my life.”
Actually, Clark was 25 at the time, but she seems to be getting better with age. She heads to Vancouver as one of the gold medal favourites in a crowded field. Some of her major competitors, including Liu Jiayu of China, are nearly a decade younger.
Most were not yet teenagers when Clark won in Salt Lake, and most were not world-class riders when she tumbled in her final run at the 2006 Turin Games, falling to a fourth-place finish.
“I’ve had two very full — yet very different — Olympic experiences,” said Clark, a native of Vermont. “And both had a lot of value and I’m thankful for having been through both of them. I think I’m more driven by having grown as an individual heading into this one, and not having to do something to prove to people who I am, not have to maintain or be threatened that who I am is going to be taken away by my performance at the Olympics.”
Her relaxed state should make others nervous. Clark, unlike most of her competitors, generally avoids the red-carpet treatment that star snowboarders receive, saving her splashes for the pipe. Her down-to-earth state can be traced to her upbringing in Vermont, where her family owns a tavern called T.C.’s Family Restaurant.
Clark is not sure how long she will compete — and if she keeps getting better, this may not be her last Olympics. In a sport in which the tricks are getting tougher by the year, and the proverbial bar keeps getting nudged higher, Clark has somehow maintained her position as one of the top bar nudgers.
“That’s what I like about the sport,” she said. “You have to continue progressing in order to stay in it. If I wasn’t learning things every day, I’d probably get bored. I love that aspect of it, being part of something that is actually shaping what people in years to come will do. I hope by the time I get done, my ceiling is the next generation’s floor.”
Clark won the first of five Olympic qualifying events at Copper Mountain, Colo., in December.
“Everything for me this season is leading up to Vancouver, and every event I’m using as practice for that,” Clark said.
