SportNews met a completely relaxed Damian Clara in Reischach. © Thomas Debelyak

“A mental monster”: This is how Damian Clara lives and works

He is a complete professional through and through. At 19 years old, he could be doing much more than sweating for hours in the weight room, letting trainers and advisors show him the way, and managing his life on his own thousands of kilometers away from home. But Damian Clara has a dream.

July 26, 2024

Damian Clara wants to be in the NHL - and he has a very precise plan for how he wants to make this dream come true. During a visit to his hometown of Reischach, we were given a clear idea of ​​the means he is using to achieve this and what he is investing in it.

Clara has chosen the Oberwiesen Hotel on the upper edge of town as the meeting point. That's where his fitness trainer René Baur has set up his "torture chamber". The ice hockey goalie sweats here for two hours a day. The aim is to get the body back in shape after a long championship season with the Swedish second division team Brynäs, and then, in a second step, to take yourself to the next physical level. The motto is: develop the hip muscles, strengthen the thighs, stabilize the back and boost jumping power.

Baur, a former ice hockey goalie and national player himself, has known Clara since he was 13. It is no coincidence that the two work together almost all summer long. The youngster describes his fitness coach as a "brutal fanatic," but "he has tremendous expertise and also works with many top ice hockey players."

“The boy is extremely professional.” Fitness trainer René Baur

Of course, we also wanted to hear the opinion of the instructor when we visited the training. He said of the almost two-meter-tall giant: "The focus is on balancing and stabilizing this huge body. That takes time, you can't rush anything. Damian has to have that patience." He still has to internalize that, says Baur, but he has completely different strengths: "The calmness on the ice, his intelligence and his attitude to this job. The boy is extremely professional. He is a mental monster, in a positive sense. It is great fun to work with someone like that."

Clara's summer is not just about strength training. He has been on the ice for ice training in Salzburg, at the Anaheim Ducks' development camp in California and occasionally with the HC Pustertal in Brixen. He balances these sessions with hand-eye coordination exercises, endurance runs, mountain hikes and cycling. He also plays tennis, basketball and beach volleyball with friends. They also meet up spontaneously, as Clara reveals. "These are often old friends. Some of them don't really know what I do and are hardly interested in ice hockey. It's relaxing for me and does me a lot of good."

Clara speaks five languages

When Clara says these sentences, we have long since said goodbye to Baur and moved on to his parents' hotel, the Tannenhof, not far from the Kronplatz valley station. In the cozy garden of the hotel, Clara reveals that he enjoys "coming home and just being Damian."

He has had a successful but difficult time in sports. During his years of training in Salzburg, everything was given to him and taken care of for him; it was a life at a boarding school. "In Sweden, I first had to learn to organize my everyday life myself, to divide my time sensibly. I also had to learn the language quickly. Somehow I managed everything (laughs)." Clara now speaks fluent Swedish as well as four other languages. He also completed his Matura as a private student at the Realgymnasium in Bruneck. "In May, I had to take all the exams for the fourth and fifth years of high school, which was really stressful," the Reischach native looks back.

“There are plenty of players with my resume.” Damian Clara

It wasn't just during this time that sport sometimes took a back seat. In general, Clara only follows international ice hockey peripherally, and even a Stanley Cup final doesn't get him out of bed at night. "I'd rather have a good night's sleep the next day. And to be honest? I've never seen the legendary ice hockey film 'The Mighty Ducks' either. I still have to catch up on that before I maybe go to Anaheim to see the Ducks one day (laughs)."

Damian Clara led Brynäs to the Swedish second division title.

Anaheim and the NHL are still a long way away, however, as the goalie, who was drafted in 2023 as the first real South Tyrolean, repeats like a mantra in our conversation. "In Sweden, there are players with my resume like sand on the beach. The NHL is somehow not even an issue there. I, on the other hand, have to explain again and again that it's not as impressive as it sounds and my chance of playing in the NHL is still very vague."

First of all, Clara has to assert himself at the Swedish big club Färjestad and challenge former NHL goalie Maxime Lagacé for the position of starting goalie. It will not be until next summer, when his contract in Sweden ends, that the Ducks and the team will decide whether Clara will continue his career in Europe or in one of the NHL franchise's farm teams. Until then, the 19-year-old wonder boy still has a lot of training and games to do.