Kelly Clark
Kelly Clark
Kelly Clarkis an American snowboarder who won halfpipe gold at the 2002 Winter Olympics...
ProfessionSnowboarder
Date of Birth26 July 1983
reality anchors choices
I don't look to my situation to determine what choices I make. I've developed a good sense of values and beliefs. That's my reality. No matter where I am, God is still good. No matter where I am, nothing is impossible. It's those sort of principles that really anchor me.
jobs home thinking
I think I've done a pretty good job of not compartmentalizing my life. I take my core values and I live them out at home like I would in my snowboarding like I would at church with my friends.
years two interesting
I've always lived a life where what you see if what you get. I've never wanted to live two different lifestyles. The initial transition for me was perhaps the most difficult. It wasn't easy communicating what I believed and what my values were. Establishing that as a young adult was interesting. I was 20 years old when I got saved.
thinking who-i-am people
I'm more comfortable with my beliefs and with who I am. I honestly don't think about it that much. I just try to live my life and I try to love people. I try to love God well and I try to love people well. Those are my main objectives.
attitude giving community
Yeah, one of my approaches with my community, my friends, the companies I represent, has been to take the attitude of what I bring instead of what I can get. What can I give?
successful thinking years
These have been the most successful years I've ever had. I've been placing well in the contests but more importantly I've been enjoying them. I think those two things go hand-in-hand.
thinking self-worth snowboarding
2006 Games -by then, my identity had started to shift. Before that, my identity was in snowboarding. That's how people knew me and that's how I knew myself. That's where I got a lot of my self worth. That began to shift and I started to understand that I didn't get my worth from people or from the things that I did. It was from Christ. If I hadn't had that shift in my life, I think my world would have come crumbling down.
girl christian church
I thought being a Christian was about following rules and going to church and being good all the time, but this girl helped me understand that it's about having a relationship with God. That was where things shifted for me.
girl love-you two
When I was 20, I was contemplating quitting. I was at the first event of the season and I overhead a conversation between two girls. One told the other, "God still loves you," and that caught my attention. Later that day, I caught up with the girl and asked her what she meant. Before then, I'd never really thought about God. But there was an undeniable stirring in me and I couldn't ignore it.
heart years world
By the time I was 18 years old, I had achieved everything that was in my heart to do and at the same time I wasn't finding the fulfillment I was expecting to get from it. All of the experiences were incredible and I wouldn't trade them for the world, but it wasn't fulfilling me. I went through the motions for a few more years, but I was looking for something more.
girl winter years
It's funny. I competed against a 13-year old girl at the Winter X Games. I looked down at her birth date and it said 2000. I was like, "Huh, I wonder if she even knows what Y2K is?" But I guess I've just been able to build a foundation.
running snowboarding skills
The foundational skills of snowboarding are what pay off in the long run. That's something I've been able to build over time and that's benefited me a lot. With my age and looking at my career, perhaps I'm more comfortable in my own skin than I've ever been.
growing-up people age
I'm not trying to snowboard for other people anymore. That just kind of comes with age and growing up. That's helped me a lot. Some of that started right after the last Olympics (in Vancouver).
teammate olympics strange
I was having a conversation with one of my teammates and she asked me, "Aren't you so glad it's over? We don't have to compete anymore." I thought that was a strange comment but in that moment I realized that I was doing it for the right reasons. I wasn't looking at the Olympics to define me. I wasn't to arrive somewhere by performing well in a contest.