About the time the rest of us were learning how to jump rope at recess, 7-year-old Kelly Clark was already mastering the cutthroat sport of snowboarding.
The Newport, Rhode Island native started competing in 1999 and became an Olympic gold medalist for the women’s halfpipe in the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Now, 16 years later, Clark heads into the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang as snowboarding’s most decorated Olympian.
The 34-year-old’s long list of accomplishments include 5-time World Snowboard Tour season champion, 8-time Burton U.S. Open halfpipe champion, 7-time X Games halfpipe gold medalist, and 2-time Olympic halfpipe bronze medalist. She’s basically the Michael Phelps of snowboarding.
But as it goes with all accolades, their sense of fulfillment faded with time.
Clark particularly recalls her Olympic victory in 2002, which marked a symbolic win for the nation when she took the first American gold after the 9/11 attacks.
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“I hit the peak, the pinnacle,” said Clark. “It was unbelievable.”
But just a few months later, after the news interviews, hometown parades, and worldwide praise died down, she found herself feeling empty once again.
“In all those external successes, I was really looking for that sense of significance,” said Clark. “I think our greatest need as humans is to be significant, and we’ll look for that everywhere. That’s just what I did with my snowboarding.”
The following year, she began asking herself one unsettling question repeatedly: “Now what?”
It was that simple yet gnawing question that would lead her down a path of self-reflection and pursuit of her savior Jesus Christ.
Her coach that following season, Rick Bower, noticed a distinct change in Clark after her big Olympic win. They were now both faced with the challenge of making the best snowboarder in the world even better, and it was a daunting task that clearly weighed on the athlete.
Clark felt herself crumbling under the weight of her own expectation and the gold-standard she had set for herself.
“She was not feeling connected to anything,” Bower said. “She was really struggling. You could see that struggle.”
Feeling incredibly depressed before her first event of the season that year (and once the site of her biggest career accomplishment), Clark poured her heartache out in her journal.
“I don’t care if I wake up tomorrow, and I don’t think anybody else cares,” she wrote.
Even in her state of despair, she managed to qualify for finals, but it just didn’t carry the same meaning that it did before. It was during this low point that Clark overheard something that would change the course of her spiritual journey.
After one girl failed to qualify, she heard another high-profile snowboarder whisper these words to her: “Hey, it’s all right. God still loves you. You don’t need to cry.”