Column: Quite a run comes to an end for Kate Hansen

Shortly after a class at Brigham Young University, Kate Hansen is going on a bit of a self-deprecating diatribe.

Days earlier, a story online announced that the 23-year-old student with an unrelenting ear-to-ear grin, dance moves known worldwide and a penchant for traveling really fast on a luge track was hanging up her spandex and sled.

Soon thereafter, Hansen was getting phone calls and texts left and right.

It all led to the aforementioned self-deprecating diatribe as she’s proclaiming how much she’s not a big deal and she certainly doesn’t want people believing she thinks she is.

“I don’t want it to look like I’m on a soap box trying to get attention,” she said Tuesday, walking and talking on the BYU campus.

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Truth is, “retirement” was not really anything Hansen had even thought of as the calendar stretches to more than two years since the La Cañada High alumna took 10th place in the women’s luge at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

There was no grand announcement. It was actually a question she was a bit surprised by that was posed to her while she was working as a luge analyst for NBC Sports.

Just like that, the question was asked and Hansen told NBCSports.com, “I won’t go back to [competing in] luge.”

And just like that, Feb. 10, 2014 in Sochi, Russia will stand as the last time Kate Hansen luged across the finish line.

“I kind of had a feeling that would be my last time on ice,” Hansen said through the clarity of retrospect.

During her Olympics run, Hansen captivated people and rose to stardom largely due to a winning personality and a warm-up dance routine that eventually led to her strutting her stuff on “The Today Show” during the Games and becoming an instant star. She grabbed added notoriety for a prank she played on behalf of late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel when she released a video of a wolf roaming the halls of her Olympic dorm, though it was actually a wolf shot in a studio in California.

When Hansen returned to the states, she had plenty more television appearances, was instrumental in bringing USA Luge’s Slider Search, which looks for prospective future lugers, to La Cañada and then made the decision to sit out the upcoming luge World Cup season to return to classes at BYU.

Getting back to hitting the books was really the only true path the then-21-year-old was setting out on, though.

“It’s not like I really had a grand plan,” Hansen said.

Opportunities were aplenty for Hansen, though, as her quick fame got her notice and her natural charisma and good nature maintained it.

One of those opportunities was to throw out the first pitch for the Los Angeles Dodgers. That first pitch and the energy showcased by Hansen basically just being herself prior to the game led to her getting a job with the Dodgers as an in-game host that she still holds now.

Olympian Kate Hansen, of La Cañada Flintridge, threw the ceremonial first pitch at Dodger Stadium on Thursday, April 17, 2014. She is now an in-game host for the Dodgers.

(Tim Berger / Staff Photographer)

“I think luge was a springboard for a ton of opportunities, but I don’t think any of these would be possible if I was still in it,” the communications major said. “I think the timing was perfect.”

Therein lies the reason 2014 led so directly to 2016 for Hansen.

If it was not for luge, Hansen wouldn’t have found herself on “The Queen Latifah Show” or “American Ninja Warrior” or trying her hand as an analyst for NBC Sports. But if Hansen decided to give the commitment she knows all too well that being a part of Team USA requires, this new adventure called life that she is currently on would not be possible.

“Luge isn’t something you can do unless you’re completely in it,” Hansen said. “Either I’m 100% concentrated on it or I’m not at all.”

While Hansen’s acclaim came during the 2014 Winter Olympics, her days in luge began roughly 11 years earlier when her dad took the 10-year-old to a USA Luge Slider Search in Long Beach.

Hansen became a major prospect when she became a junior world champion in 2008.

Obviously, she left her best impression for last in the world of luge. In January of 2014, she became the first American to win a World Cup race since 1997 when she prevailed in 1 minute 23.976 seconds in Latvia.

Alas, when the inevitable question is asked as to whether there’s any one particular moment that beckons as the best in more than a decade sledding across the world, there is no mention of the glory of victory and triumph.

“That’s something I’m still trying to process,” Hansen said. “I had some good races, won some races, I had a track record, but none of that is my favorite.”

Instead, Hansen looks back fondly in the rear view of globe trotting as a member of Team USA at the day of the race, being with her teammates and competitors from other countries that she still refers to as friends. There was the camaraderie of it all before, during and after that stands the test of time and brings a smile to her face more so than any medals or impressive times.

“Those are my favorite moments,” she said. “That’s what I’m most grateful for.”

In the end, Hansen’s fire for life is far greater than the flame of competition.

“I miss my team, I miss traveling, I miss my European friends,” Hansen said, “but I don’t miss the competition.

“What I try, what I want to do is just live. I just want to get out there and see the world I never got to see.

“Right now, I want to relive all the things about my life that I missed.”

It might seem a bit odd to hear someone who regularly toured the world talk about seeing it, but that was with an agenda as an athlete. And lost in the snapshot of celebrity gained by Hansen is the amazing journey taken to get to Sochi.

Kids from California don’t luge. They just don’t. But she did.

Kids in specialized sports on the Olympic track often take the home-school route. They just do. But she refused. Instead, she made up her work at La Cañada and settled for nothing less than graduating on time.

Athletes in most sports don’t usually compete with broken bones, either. But she did. She competed with a broken foot, which led to her warm-up dance routine that led to a phenomenon in the winter of 2014.

Olympian Kate Hansen greets a friend as she arrives for interviews and sign autographs at the Crescenta-Cañada Family YMCA in La Canada on Tuesday, March 11, 2014.

(Tim Berger / Staff Photographer)

Truth be told, most kids don’t accomplish the goals they set at an early age. They just don’t. But she did.

“I was concentrated on that goal. All I wanted to do was go the Olympics and finish in the top 10,” Hansen said. “So I accomplished what I wanted.”

Luge was a long, bumpy, often arduous, undeniably memorable winter wonderland year-round for Hansen.

“It shaped me tremendously,” she said. “I don’t regret anything, but it wasn’t easy.”

So now, sans spandex and a practice and competition schedule, nothing is stopping her from drinking it all in.

“It was a crazy ride,” Hansen said.

A wild ride that saw a slider from Southern California speed, smile and dance her way into the hearts and minds of people from La Cañada Flintridge to Russia and seemingly all points in between has reached the finish line.

But, while it might not be on the ice, Hansen’s still going full speed ahead and she’s got plenty left to do – and she’ll still be smiling, she’ll still be dancing.

That all said, one phenomenal run has come to a close. And so it goes that Kate Hansen will luge no longer and whether she thinks so or not, it’s a big deal.

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Grant Gordon, grant.gordon@latimes.com

Twitter: @TCNGrantGordon