Bryan Clay Knows Redemption On and Off the Battlefield

Victorious Against All Odds

Victorious against all odds. The true nature of redemption is remarkable. And no one knows that better than Bryan Clay—and Olympic champion who was once a traveler on the dark road to destruction. From his broken family to his troubled youth, Clay’s odds in life were more in favor of ending in criminality than in athletic victory on the world stage. But thanks to his mother—a woman of conviction, relentlessly dedicated to prayer—God’s design for his life began to develop in a most miraculous way, turning Clay into champion of more than just athletics but also of faith and family. Priceless lessons of trust, perseverance, and hope remind us that life is precious and—just like the sport that afforded Clay the title of World’s Greatest Athlete—every second counts.

Wonder what it takes to be the World’s Greatest Athlete? Check out the new

book from Olympic Champion Bryan Clay.

A Troubled Childhood

A troubled childhood. Life got worse, faster than I was able to handle it. When my parents fought, my brother and I learned to retreat to our bedroom and shut the door. I often held him while we heard dishes breaking against the wall in the kitchen, my parents screaming, doors slamming, and my mom crying. My brother was scared, and I tried to reassure him by saying, “It’s going to be okay.” But I had no confidence that things were going to be okay. We wouldn’t come out of our room until the yelling stopped for good, which usually happened only when my dad decided to take a drive. Something had changed drastically in our family. The heaven of my earliest years had turned into a confusing hell from which I could see no escape. Through it all, I felt that my dad and mom loved us, but their behavior toward each other made no sense to us. After a fight, my mom would pull us aside, hold us together in her arms, and say, “I’m sorry, boys. Mommy and Daddy still love each other. We’re just having a hard time right now.” If they loved each other, why did they spew so much hatred at each other at times? Why did they try to hurt each other physically? The atmosphere of stress and uncertainty in the home was simply horrible.

Discovering a Gift

Discovering a gift. It was on the playground that I began to realize I had some athletic talent. I loved football, and we took our shoes off and played tackle football in the grass at every recess. I was always the team captain or the first person picked because I was one of the fastest boys, and I hated to lose, so I competed as hard as anyone. I could also jump pretty well, which was evident in fifth grade when we boys tried to dunk a basketball on an eight-foot rim on the playground. We ran barefoot on the hot basketball court and tried to stuff the ball, and though I wasn’t taller than the other kids, I was one of the few who could do it. The local Pop Warner football coaches tried to recruit me to play by saying, “You’re fast, and you can jump. You should come out for the team.” But Mom wouldn’t let me, probably because she didn’t want me to fight other players. In 1988, I was watching the summer Olympics with my mom and dad, and I saw Carl Lewis run the 100-meter dash. I turned to them and said, “I want to do that when I get older.”

An Olympic Prophecy

An Olympic prophecy. My mom kept calling and telling me that she was praying for me, and that I was going to go to the Olympics and win the gold medal. I kept blowing her off because it wasn’t a subject I enjoyed talking about. It brought up fears of failure and reminded me of a standard of excellence I thought I would never meet. There was nothing to indicate that what God had “told” her might be true. I was a decent college athlete but nothing more. I kept plugging away, trying to get better but mainly using the sport to keep myself riding high socially. I had set some performance goals, but I was more interested in having fun. Track was important because it paid my way through school and kept me popular. But a true love of the sport wasn’t there. Going to the Olympics was still not a realistic dream, in my assessment. I’d had some success but not nearly the kind of success that I would need to make it to the Olympic Trials. There was still a 1,000-point gulf between what I was scoring and what I needed to score. I never talked about my doubts; I just played the role and said, “Yeah, I can make the Olympics.”

Lessons of a Champion

Lessons of a champion. The lessons that I learned at Edmonton initiated a deep and intense education in the character of a champion. The lessons were not confined to the track. Each one bled over into my spiritual life as well. And the spiritual lessons took on new life when I applied them to my training. Track and faith seemed to constantly feed each other. Edmonton had helped me understand what competing at the highest level would require. I had to count the cost of finishing a meet. If I was committed to it and loved it, I would not quit when it got hard. By sticking with it, I was honoring and reflecting Christ’s love for me. He had committed to me, knowing that I would make bad choices, even run from Him for many years, that I would grieve Him. But He didn’t walk away. That was the kind of commitment I needed to have to the sport. The lesson also worked the other way. If I was committed to track and it was number three on my list of priorities, how much more committed and loving should I be with my family? How much more committed should I be to Christ? The more I committed to be the best decathlete I could, the higher I set the bar for myself in other areas of life. My love for God and my love for track fueled each other.

Finishing the Race

Finishing the race. Just finish. Don’t mess it up , I kept telling myself. Just finish, Bryan. Get there. Do your best, I told myself, remembering my deal with God. The finish line came swimming into view. Many of the guys had already crossed it and were walking around with hands on their hips. The line seemed to hover in a timeless space for a moment, untouchable, unreal, the culmination of so many dreams, so many promises, so much planning and sacrifice by my wife, my family, my coaches, and me. As I stumbled toward it, hoping not to collapse onto the track, it seemed as if it would recede forever in front of me, always unattainable. My halting steps ate away at the distance, and casting aside remaining doubts, I lunged across the finish line, veered onto the grass, and fell onto my back. You would have thought I had just completed a marathon. In a way, I had. I heard the crowd roar. Oh, thank God it’s over, I thought. There was no sense of victory or glory—just pure relief. I lay there with absolutely nothing left inside me. But I had done it.