If this is the end of the legendary career of Kelly Clark, it was a pretty good final chapter.
West Dover's gift to snowboarding earned her third Olympic medal on Feb. 12 with a bronze in the women's halfpipe at the Sochi Games in Russia. She won the gold in Salt Lake City 2002 and a bronze in Vancouver 2010. She now holds more Olympic medals than any other snowboarder since Olympic snowboarding debuted at the Nagano games in 1998.
Clark, 30, finished behind teammate Kaitlyn Farrington of Sun Valley, Idaho, and Torah Bright of Australia, who won the gold in this event in 2010. Fellow Vermonter Hannah Teter, of Belmont, finished fourth.
Clark had trouble on her first run when her board caught the lip of the halfpipe deck and she came down hard. She clinched her medal with a better performance in her second run, which included her signature move: a huge frontside 1080 (three full revolutions in midair) that no other competitor attempted.
Given her success on the pro circuit in 2012 and 2013, Clark had a legitimate shot at the gold. But she said afterward that she was at peace with herself and the effort she put in.
“I will chase down gold medals and wins and podiums just as much as the next person, but I can still be so happy apart from simply winning,” she told USA Today. “I felt more prepared for this. I handled that same situation that I handled in Vancouver with much more grace, much easier for me this time around. I was thinking, 'Wow, I've grown up a lot.'”
Farrington, 24, had plenty of praise for her teammate.
“This is Kelly's fourth Olympics and she's such an inspiration to all of us girls,” she said. “She was the first lady to land a frontside 1080 and she just keeps pushing the sport. She's such a strong rider and she's been killing it all year. She's an amazing person as well, and she's coached us young kids through this whole process.”
Clark turns 31 in July, and her place in snowboarding history is secure. In the warm-up to the Olympics, she won her fourth-straight X Games gold medal in the women's halfpipe. It was Clark's seventh career X Games gold and her 12th medal overall - the most for any woman in the X Games' 20-year history.
She has more wins (67) than any other rider - male or female - in history. She has landed on the podium in first, second, and third in 110 of the 129 events she has ridden in, and she has only gotten better as the years have passed.
Clark has not announced her post-Sochi plans. If she does retire from competition, she likely will spend more time fundraising for the Kelly Clark Foundation, which gives youth opportunities and helps them become successful through snowboarding.
And, in the eyes of the many young riders she has inspired, Kelly Clark will be the standard by which all other riders are measured.