More to achieve
Olympian Kelly Clark motivated to help people
After Kelly Clark bloodied her nose with a crash on the halfpipe deck in Olympic qualifying last month, a friend suggested she’d need to add a chapter to her book.
But the veteran snowboarder knew better. Her book, Inspired, covered a far more serious injury and laid out the framework that has made Clark not only the winningest rider ever but also one of the most influential people in the sport.
And besides, the bloody nose didn’t stop her from reaching the Dew Tour podium on the way to trying to make her fifth Olympic team.
“I was like, actually, this is proof of concept for the book,” Clark said. “This is exactly what the book is about, and that sort of inner structure that I developed that I shared in the book is point in case how I was able to overcome (that) day, because of all the work I put in ahead of time.”
That sort of intentional approach is what has driven Clark, 34, as the threetime Olympic medalist continues a career long after many of her contemporaries have stopped competing.
It’s what led her to write Inspired, which took more than two years to complete and was released in December. Clark has long aimed to leave snowboarding in a better place, saying often her ceiling should be the next generation’s floor, and sought a way to share what has motivated her and help people apply that to their lives.
“It’s an extension of who I say I am. If I said I believed in all those things and I wanted to help the next generation and I believed in helping women, all those things that I say, if I didn’t have actions, tangible things to back it up, it wouldn’t be much more than just a good story,” Clark said.
“It has to be real. It has to be tangible. It has to be something that’s transferable, and that’s really what I wanted to do with this book.”
The mind-set Clark has maintained to be internally motivated rather than pushed by circumstance or competition has helped her stay in the sport. It’s also made her one of the most successful athletes in any sport, with more than 120 podiums and more than 75 wins. That included a 16-contest winning streak that hasn’t been matched.
For all of her success, Clark measures success by what it cost her. That’s why the bronze medals she took in the last two Winter Games are just as valuable as the Olympic gold she won in Salt Lake City when she was 18.
In Vancouver, that meant overcoming a fourth-place finish in the 2006 Olympics in Torino, where she had one of the most progressive runs before falling on her last hit. In Sochi, that meant getting on the podium after crashing hard throughout practice and the competition.
“When I reflect on things, it is very successful,” Clark said. “But at the same time, perhaps that’s why I’m still here, because moving forward I know I can do better, I know I have more. There’s a level of excellence that I haven’t achieved that I’m looking to do in the Olympic arena.”
Going into Pyeongchang, where competition begins in a month, Clark knows her success there will come at a high cost.
After going nearly two decades without major injury, she had surgery in 2015 to reattach part of her hamstring and repair the labrum, which is the cartilage around the hip socket.
Clark had already been talking to an editor with her ideas for a book, and she suddenly found herself with some time to write it.
“It kind of helped me own the process and live the process and embrace the process because I was writing it, I was thinking about it, I was believing it,” Clark said. “I was having to walk out things I said I believed, and the book helped put that on paper and have it in front of me and be like, OK, this is what I’m doing.”
Once she returned, Clark said she came back stronger than before. That meant two-a-day workouts, running stairs (her favorite) and lifting and agility in the gym.
That paid off with a win at the test event in Pyeongchang last season, and it has her on the verge of locking up a spot on the U.S. team.
Clark finished third and second, respectively, in the first two qualifiers, with 17-year-old Chloe Kim winning both to secure her spot. Clark can make it official with a top-three finish at the U.S. Grand Prix events in Snowmass, Colo., this week or Mammoth Mountain, Calif., next week.
Effectively, though, she is expected to make it to Pyeongchang. Two other riders would need to take a first- and second-place finish in the next two events and have Clark and Kim not be a factor for Clark not make it.
Clark knows this might be her last Olympics. Unlike the last two, where she gave her best performance in difficult situations, she wants to show her best snowboarding.
The woman who pioneered the 1080 is working on doing them back-to-back, as Kim has done. Clark’s brought back the McTwist, a flip with one and a half rotations, which helped her win in Salt Lake.
“I find myself at the end of an inspiring and fulfilling career, though I believe some of my best moments are yet to come,” she wrote. “I still have something to give.”
Clark hopes that’s through her book, one that she wants to be part of her legacy beyond contest results. But Clark also hopes that’s in a halfpipe in South Korea, where she can add another chapter to her story.