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| Chris Klug |
“It’s a great honor,” Klug said Thursday. “I’m really excited about it. It’s been fun to reflect on the last 30 years.”
Klug said he’s spent time in recent days reminiscing with his mother, Aspen High counselor Kathy Klug, his father, Aspen Square general manager Warren Klug, and his wife, Melissa, about his life on snow.
Some of his fondest memories, he said, are of his days snowboarding in the early ’80s as the sport was emerging, when he duct-taped Moon Boots to a crude Burton board and schlepped to races in his parents’ Wagoneer.
Those early days of the sport led Klug into 20 years of World Cup competition, which concluded last year with his 11th U.S. title. He competed in snowboard racing’s first appearance in the Winter Olympics, in Nagano, Japan, in 1998.
Two years later, he received a lifesaving liver transplant to treat a rare disease with which he’d been diagnosed in the early 1990s.
He returned to racing after his recovery and in 2002, became the first organ transplant recipient ever to compete in the Olympics while also winning a bronze medal.
He founded the Chris Klug Foundation in 2003 to spread awareness and raise money for organ donation, and continues to devote much of his time to the cause. Klug then chronicled his story in the 2004 memoir, “To the Edge and Back.”
Last year, he competed in the Olympics for the third time, in Vancouver.
At tonight’s ceremony, Klug will be joined by his family, including his 6-month-old daughter, Bali, along with his longtime coach, Rob Roy, and teammate Ian Price.
The family of the teenage gunshot victim who gave Klug his new liver, he said, also will be traveling to Colorado from Idaho for the event.
At 38, the freshly-retired Klug is among the youngest athletes the Hall of Fame has inducted.
While he said he plans to attend the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia as a commentator, he’s loath to rule out racing.
“I truly believe if I put my mind to it I could compete at the highest level in Russia,” he said. “But there are so many other things I want to do right now.”
Indeed, though Klug’s not in race training these days he is certainly no slouch. Over the last year, he’s competed in the Aspen area’s toughest endurance and mountaineering events — from the Elk Mountains Grand Traverse, to the summer and winter Power of Four competitions, to the Leadville 100 bike race.
“I’m going to keep challenging myself with these mountaineering adventures,” he said. “So I’m not done yet.”
Since giving up the itinerant schedule of a competitive racer, Klug also has spent much of the last year working on his real estate business in Aspen.
He’s currently planning a new undertaking, through which he wants to raise awareness of organ donation: to summit the highest mountain peaks on each of the world’s seven continents.
“It’s a dream I’ve always had,” he said. “I want to be the first transplant [recipient] to do all of the ‘Seven Summits.’”
This week included the launch party for the sixth annual Summit For Life, a nighttime race up Aspen Mountain and fundraising event for the Klug Foundation, scheduled for Dec. 10. Last year, the event raised $115,000.
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