PARK CITY — The blue mountain sky turned golden for an American teenager Sunday.
Snowboarder Kelly Clark soared to victory in the women's Olympic halfpipe contest in dramatic fashion, winning on the final run of the day before thousands of screaming fans in a sold-out stadium. Her gold medal was the first for the United States in the 2002 Winter Games.
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"I knew I had a medal guaranteed so I was just going to go out and have fun because I ride a lot better when I'm relaxed and I knew if I didn't give it my all I would regret it," said the 18-year-old Mount Snow, Vt., native who rode with a severely bruised tailbone.
Already assured of at least a silver medal, Clark had nothing to lose on her second run.
On the strength of lofty straight airs and a 720-degree spin, Doriane Vidal of France had put up a seemingly unreachable score of 43 out of a possible 50. Then she watched and waited for Clark.
"It was a strange feeling. I like her and I was hoping she would do good and I was also hoping she wouldn't beat me," silver medalist Vidal said.
Not one to back down, Clark knew that although the five-judge panel had rewarded her specialty — amplitude or height — all day, going huge without another technical
trick wouldn't be enough. Judges also score standard maneuvers, rotations and overall impression.
With Blink 182's "This is Growing Up" pulsing through her mini-disc headphones and the raucous crowd cheering every trick, Clark threw down a McTwist (an inverted 540-degree spin) and an unexpected 720 at the end of her run.
The scoreboard flashed 47.9 and the stands erupted. Clark was an Olympic champion, America's first in snowboarding.
Clark learned the 720 this year and had tried it in competition only once before — at the X Games last month, which she also won. In fact, she has now won five halfpipe contests in a row this season.
Fabienne Reuteler of Switzerland won the bronze medal Sunday, scoring 39.7.
American riders Shannon Dunn and Tricia Byrnes had good days, finishing fifth and sixth, respectively.
Byrnes finally landed a McTwist, and Dunn, the bronze medalist in Nagano four years ago, put up perhaps the run of her life. And under the scoring system used in the 1998 Games may well have found herself on the podium.
"I was kind of surprised at how much they counted amplitude. I like to get technical and do innovative tricks. They scored huge on amplitude. I think that's a little strange because it really doesn't push the riding too much," she said.
It definitely worked for Clark, one of the highest-flying women snowboarders on tour. So high in fact, she is often nursing assorted bumps and bruises from maneuvers gone awry. Sunday was no different after landing hard on her rear end attempting a McTwist in practice last week.
"There's a certain fear factor that you have to let go of," Clark said of her ability to launch herself 6 to 8 feet above the lip of the halfpipe or some 23 feet above the flat bottom.
And apparently, there's also something in her diet the helped pump her up. Clark's father, Terry Clark, said Kelly's additional 15 pounds over last season allow her to carry more momentum into her tricks.
Terry Clark wasn't always a big fan of his daughter's snowboarding. In fact, he scolded her for sneaking off with a snowboard when she was an 11-year-old ski racer at Mount Snow Academy. Snowboarding was a fad, he had told her.
"I was wrong," the beaming father said Sunday wearing a "Kelly Clark Olympian 02" cap.
Clark, who recently moved to Mammoth Lakes, Calif., to be near one of the world's best halfpipes, joined the pro snowboard tour two years ago at age 16.
The scary thing is the new Olympic snowboard queen has no place to go but up.
"That run's an average run for her," Byrnes said of Clark's gold medal winning effort. "She wanted it, and I'm glad she got it."
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