Kelly Clark: Snowboarding Superstar
This past fall, when the Women’s Sports Foundation released their list of 10 finalists for their prestigious Sportswoman of the Year awards, there were some familiar names: Serena Williams, Michelle Kwan and . Jackie Joyner Kersee to name a few. There were also two Vermonters: Kelly Clark and Hannah Kearney.
While Kearney wound up her freestyle career last March with her fourth mogul title, Clark is still charging hard on hers. The Dover, Vt. native, who got her start riding at Mount Snow on a Mobile Monster her family bought at K-Mart, just seems to up the ante every year. In 2015, she added her fifth World Snowboarding Tour Title to a roster of 2015 wins that also included her eighth Burton U.S. Open win and a silver at the X Games in Aspen. She also walked the red carpet in L.A. to pick up her second ESPY award for Best Female Action Sports Athlete.
At 33, the three-time Olympic champion is also the first woman to land a 1080 in the halfpipe. She currently spends much of her time when she’s not competing training in Mammoth, Calif., and working with her Kelly Clark Foundation to raise money and provide scholarships for promising young snowboarders to pursue their dreams. But she’s often home, hitting up TC’s, her family’s restaurant in Dover, visiting Burton (her sponsor) and riding the home hill where it all started: Mount Snow.