Retired "Clarky" relishes picking her powder days

Kirsten Clark is only 30, but rather than training for what would be her 14th season with the U.S. Ski Team, the seven-time U.S. champion is home in California and also her native Maine, “extremely busy,” she says, “personal training six athletes, young female ski racers ages 14 to 19. I have also taken over my husband’s office work for his construction company.”
ALL ATHLETES RETIRE young, and ski racers — nearly all of whom endure at least knee surgery, and often more, during brief careers — retire earlier than most. Kirsten Clark is only 30, but rather than training for what would be her 14th season with the U.S. Ski Team, the seven-time U.S. champion (including four straight in downhill from 1998 to 2001, a record unmatched by any American skier) is home in California and also her native Maine, “extremely busy,” she says, “personal training six athletes, young female ski racers ages 14 to 19. I have also taken over my husband’s office work for his construction company."
    What's more, "Clarky," as she was known to most of her former teammates and coaches, is expecting her first child in early 2008 with husband and former ski racer and coach Andreas Rickenbach.
    Clark hung up her speed skis for good in March after World Cup Finals. In our interview she said the expected things about enjoying time at home, not traveling or living out of suitcases and bags, looking forward to freeskiing “particularly on the powder days and being able to pick and choose the days I don’t want to ski,” and enjoying “being in touch” with old teammates and coaches about “what is happening on the road.” But is it ever that simple?
    So we asked Clark some more questions. Was she proud of her achievements — including a World Championships silver medal, and one World Cup victory — or, like other highly-driven people, did she wish she had accomplished more, and perhaps it was family and friends who were prouder? “I am content but of course as an athlete you always want more,” she responded; overall she was “more than happy” with her 13-year career. “It is hard to say if my family is more proud of me than myself.” We wanted to know how a champion ex-downhiller picks those days she decides to ski: Is it to do with weather, body pains or fatigue, snow conditions or whether you’d be going out solo, or with friends and family?
    “My body is actually feeling better now than it has in a long time,” she replied. Weather and snow conditions would now be the deciding factors, particularly those powder days. If you’re reading this far, you’ll realize what we sensed ourselves from the first round of questions: that Clark wouldn’t be easily drawn. Which, although we didn’t ask her to be sure, leads us to think that for a ski racer who finally gets to walk away from the cameras and microphones and fuss, privacy might be up there as one of those delightful immediate post-retirement benefits, up there near those powder days.