Spedian’s John Clark has a distinguished history of helping people

John Clark is Spedian’s globe-trotting Technical Director. If you’ve had the good fortune to meet him, the affable Scot knows his stuff. He will talk to you about the ins-and-outs of installing the Spedian Vehicle Graphics program and other things all day long.

Based in the United Kingdom, he’s become accustomed to bouncing between Great Britain and Rolling Meadows when he visits to train classes of new installers looking to achieve Spedian certification. But those frequent flier miles John is piling up also come from another source.

He’s also a consultant coach with the British Parasnowsport team for para-alpine skiing and para-snowboarding. John says that requires designing training programs and oversight of their training efforts during a four year cycle. Talk about making a commitment!

If you watched NBC-TV network coverage of the 2018 Winter Paralympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea in March, you might have caught a glimpse of John working with five elite male and female visually impaired and partially sighted athletes. Two of them medaled in the alpine skiing vision-impaired competition; Menna Fitzpatrick won gold, two silver and one bronze medals, and Millie Knight won two silvers and one bronze.

John himself was a member of the British Alpine Ski team when it was ranked eighth in the world from 1976-1981 and finished fourth in the World Championships at La Clusaz in France. His next job was coaching - mostly winter sports including snowboarding - before Spedian CEO Lawrence Craig made a winning move and hired John in the early 2000s.

“I enjoy working with them and I’m very happy for the kids,” said John, who communicates with the athletes during training and competition runs. “One of the big things we had to manage was jet lag and fatigue. Last year, most of the training time was in the European Alps and we spent significant time in Korea. But last summer we had to travel to Chile to find snow and winter conditions to train in. It was incredible what they accomplished. They exceeded all of our expectations.”