U.S. Snowboarding Best Friends

The U.S. women’s snowboard team is a snowboarding dream team. Gretchen Bleiler, Hannah Teeter and Kelly Clark are each extremely talented snowboarders… they also happen to be best friends. They are cheering for each other at the same time that they are competing against each other. Some people might find that difficult, but since they are all in the same position they know that’ just the way it is.

Kelly and Gretchen have been friends the longest, after meeting at their first training camp in California in 2000. That first year they were the rookies at the camp and managed to lock the car keys in the team van. The girls decided to share the blame and have been friends ever since. It wasn’t until a few years later that the pair met Hannah, but the three of them are now inseparable.

Bleiler is originally from Toledo, OH and moved to Aspen with her mom when she was 10. Her school’s PE program allowed students to ski at the nearby resort, but a few years later Gretchen switched to snowboarding. She participated in the halfpipe with a snowboarding team and after graduating from high school chose to train for the 2002 Olympics rather than go to college. Gretchen travels with “the world’s largest cosmetic bag” as she calls it. It weighs about 15 pounds she claims, which she calls both hilarious and pathetic. She is the one of the trio who is very precise about unpacking no matter where they are traveling to and for how long.

For Hannah, snowboarding runs in the family. Two of her older brothers, Elijah and Abe are pro riders and her other brother Amen is her agent. Hannah has been a professional for four years now and has already managed to win every major halfpipe competition in the world, except for the U.S. Open. She is the friend the girls consider a hippie. She even travels with an Australian wind instrument, and does circular breathing before her competitions. You could also find a yoga mat, and lots of organic food in her bag. She also started Hannah’s Gold, which is a charity in which she sells organic maple syrup and donates the earnings to a Kenyan village to give clean water and a shelter for women with AIDS. You can learn more about her charity at http://www.hannahsgold.com/.

The third of the trio, Kelly Clark, won her first Olympic gold medal at age 18. Kelly is from Vermont, and got her start on a plastic snowboard from Kmart. She now lands tricks that people would normally expect to see from the men. Kelly is the “nerd” of the group, as she travels with inspirational books and a Bible filling up her backpack.

The girls say it keeps them humble to be best friends with their competition. They have to move on quickly after a competition because there is almost always another one the next weekend, which means they will be traveling with each other to it. Even though this means they have to sometimes travel with the person who just beat them, they also are traveling with the best support system they could hope for.
They would each agree that the friendships they have made with each other are more important than what they are actually doing.

The girls competed in the first qualification heat today and each of them advanced to the finals later today. Kelly took second, while Hannah and Gretchen placed fourth and fifth respectively. Make sure to watch for these three best friends as they continue to compete today!

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• Filed Under:  
• Olympics, Snowboard, Winter Games

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thespiritzone

Hard to believe that they can be best friends and still compete. I wonder how often that happens in other sports?

Friday, February 19, 2010 at 7:32am PST