Redemption: A Rebellious Spirit, A Praying Mother, and the Unlikely Path to Olympic Gold

This is the story of the most unlikely Olympic decathlete in history. Despite size and stature, Bryan Clay is the defending champion of the 2008 Olympic gold medal and winner of the 2004 Olympic silver medal in the decathlon. His journey is as inspiring as it is gritty, as troubled as it is triumphant.

Far more than just a sports memoir, Redemption details the drudgery, devastation, and ultimate conversion that led Bryan to become a world champion. “[God] had a plan when I believed that dreams never came true because, in my life, they never did,” says Bryan. Through a remarkable series of events and devoted prayers of his mother, Bryan’s life was turned around into a victorious narrative of truly being redeemed.

Bryan Clay, watched by billions of television viewers in 2008, won the decathlon gold in Beijing and the silver in Athens in 2004. Bryan enjoys hunting, fishing, and the beach. He also counts it an honor and a privilege to coach and inspire children to make wise decisions, develop good time management skills, stay in school, follow their dreams, and maintain a well-balanced life style. Bryan and his wife, Sarah, have three children.

Joel Kilpatrick is an award-winning journalist and author whose work has been featured in Time magazine, the Washington Post, USA Today, CBS Radio, the Dallas Morning News and dozens of newspapers and magazines. He has authored and ghostwritten more than 40 books, including a New York Times bestseller. He has reported from disaster zones and civil wars in seventeen countries, and received numerous prizes for writing and reporting.

Kilpatrick has worked with many leading ministries including Rick Warren, Michael Hyatt, TBN, Joni & Friends, Nancy Alcorn, Convoy of Hope, the Dream Center and more.

Kilpatrick founded LarkNews.com, the world’s leading religion satire website which won the Dove award for humor (officially the Grady Nutt Humor Award) from the Gospel Music Association in 2005. He has won numerous awards for humor and reporting from the Evangelical Press Association. He was profiled in Time magazine, Christianity Today and on NPR, and has been featured twice in USA Today. LarkNews enjoys millions of visitors. Kilpatrick earned an MS degree in journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York in 1995. He lives in southern California with his wife and five children.