(May 15, 2023) – During the 2022/2023 International Luge Federation season, the FIL TV added something extra to their already outstanding broadcasts. In the “downtime” between races, as well as before and after the events, a new studio show was aired on the FIL YouTube channel. The informative, fun, and sometimes quirky show was hosted by 2014 Olympian and 2008 junior world champion Kate Hansen, and brought luge insights from both on and off the track. To bet on the athletes shown here, you can click on www.ufabet .com.
So to kick off the summer sliding sport interview season, we thought we would catch up with Kate to find out how she got to be the face of the FIL Studio Show and what the experience has been like thus far!
So let’s start at the beginning: How do you get started in luge?
I got into luge just how all of the Americans got into it, with the Slider Search. They came to Long Beach, I was ten years old and my dad had just heard about “this fun thing.” And I used to ride skateboards and I played sports and he was like “Do you want to go on a daddy-daughter day?” and I was like “Sure!”
So we went and I tried out and I got cut my first year! I re-tried out the year after and it stuck.
And from there you did the junior luge thing?
Yeah, the whole “rise up through the ranks” thing. You get involved, you race one nationals a year…and I never thought I would take it into high school. I thought it was just something fun, and once a year you raced nationals and the whole goal is to make the front page of the results, because the coaches don’t ever look at the second page. One year I made the front page, and then you’re on the radar of the coaches and you get an invitation to go to summer camp. Then you get the invitation to go to winter camp, and I was just trying to keep getting asked back.
You keep looking for the manilla envelope in the mailbox. Because the little envelope means you didn’t make it, but the big envelope meant you made it!
When you found out you were going to Europe the first time, what were your thoughts?
I know it’s different in bobsled and skeleton, and we’re so much younger when we’re doing it to start, but for us to get to Europe you had to make the candidate team. You get asked to go to Europe, and if race well in Europe you will get asked to come back for the second half or you get sent home over Christmas.
When I was asked to come back I was only 15 years old, and I was stoked! I was thinking “This is it!” but my parents didn’t want me going. Like at all. They figured I was missing school…because we leave in October so you’re missing basically the middle half of the school year. I was a sophomore…but I was like “this is all I’ve wanted, and all I’ve been working for…”.
At this point the Olympics aren’t even on my mind or on my radar at all. I’m just trying to get invited to camps and stuff. So I get invited to Europe and it was a really hard experience at first. My first track was Winterberg as a Youth A racer and I ended up getting bronze in my very first race there. It was the craziest thing!
I didn’t really get what was going on, but the coaches were stoked! They were like “here’s this girl who can put down clean runs and is 15 years old…”, so I did really well the first half of the year and they asked me to come back. I thought I was going to quit after my first year in Europe, I’d go back to high school and play soccer. But after Christmas I ended up winning every race in Youth A that I entered, which qualified me for the Worlds team. And I ended up winning Junior Worlds that year!
It was quite the crazy breakthrough year, but on the Youth circuit, so what does it really mean, right? But it was enough that I wasn’t allowed to quit!
My parents were like “Okay, that’s cool, we’re done” and my coaches had to tell them that this was actually a really big deal. But I also didn’t realize really what a big deal it was, and my parents certainly didn’t get it. But my coaches had to tell them “Yeah, this isn’t normal, she has to keep going.”
The next year I ended up breaking my back and missed some sliding for that but then thought “well I can’t quite now I have to come back”. I missed Vancouver the year after that, that was my third season, and that’s when I committed to four years and I was in it!”
When you say “four years”, were you already thinking about what are you going to do when you’re done sliding?
Oh yeah, every week. I don’t know if that’s because of my personality or because of my parents or growing up by the beach…Christmas of my first year in Europe and my dad rolls out a big piece of paper and he’s like “we’re going to do your plan.” He’s always provided a good life for us, we grew up in California, it’s been pretty great. So he’s always been like “Get a degree, get a 9-5 job, do the thing.” And luge threatened all that: There’s no money, there’s no degree, there’s none of that.
The thing is, to a point, luge is a “dead end” sport. That’s what my dad told me when I was 15, he said “This is a dead end sport and you need to have a plan.” So we came up with two game plans: One if I quit after that first year, and one if I went to University of Utah and slid in Park City…but we really had no idea that the Olympics were in the plan.
But he got me thinking that there was no money and no career in this. Because when you get into the world of luge it gets a little confusing, because everyone is pushing for the same thing. So I always had a Plan B instilled in me by my parents. In some ways that was beautiful and awesome, but in some ways that kept me mentally really disliking luge. And really it wasn’t until the last couple of seasons where I really mentally committed that there was no Plan B.
But that’s what it took to get to the Games, an all-in approach. And that’s been hard to recover from in a way. Like I see the beauty of the “all-in mentality”, but in some ways I see how it really screws with people.
So you make the Olympics, you get through the Olympics, and then you retire. Since then, you’ve been out there doing all sorts of things, what has kept you driven?
At the time, I felt like luge took my teenagerhood. And yes, I chose that, but I really felt like I missed a lot of things. So when I retired I was only 21…and we always talked about “I can’t wait to travel back to…here, or can’t want to show my family…this” but I never saw athletes actually do it. Because people just stay in the sport, and then when you leave the sport you have to start making money. I think I just found this sweet spot, where I didn’t have to start making money because I was in college, and I’d left early enough to where I still had the energy to get out and go do stuff.
So I really took my time through college, and I traveled every summer and went backpacking. Then I got the job as a host with the LA Dodgers, and I really loved that job, so I just kept doing that. I didn’t know if I’d come back to luge…the last time I’d been on ice was in Sochi…and I didn’t know if I was actually going to retire. I’d done this stint before where I told myself I was going to retire, and then didn’t. But then it became apparent to me that I wouldn’t be going back once I started working with the Dodgers and life was really good.
I felt like the world wouldn’t be sending me so many fun and amazing things if I was supposed to go back to Altenberg. So college was incredible, I still had a group of friends there and was doing announcing for my college with all the sports, and really got to have my college experience and be a normal person. I think that really fueled me!
And really, going to the Olympics showed me I could do anything. I mean, I went to the Olympics! So I had no limiting thoughts about my potential. The Olympics gave me unlimited confidence in my ability to do things, and I think that’s what’s taken me into so many interesting adventures. Because anything really is possible, and it’s possible because I did stuff that’s viewed as “impossible.”
You say you “went to the Olympics”, you finished tenth. Not exactly “just going.”
It was incredible!
At one point in history, out of the billions of people in the world, you were the tenth best. Number ten!
It was such a crazy experience, because I had no business finishing tenth. My runs were so terrible…my last run was really good but the first three were not. And that was the funniest part about it, like everything mattered so much at the time. But as soon as I got home nobody cared. And I’m learning that now, like nobody REALLY cares about what you did. They don’t know what they’re looking at, or what it is, and nobody was talking about my runs and how they were. But I was so fixated on those runs.
It just taught me a lot that none of it really matters, it only does matter because you care about how you’re doing.
This reminds me of chatting with Bree Schaaf, and someone told her she “only” finished fifth in 2010.
People say that all the time, right?! Their reference of success is obviously so different than what it is to us. And it really used to hurt my feelings because I was so young. But now I realize it’s fine, the generally public really has no idea about these sports at all so we just give grace to this moment.
I was really lucky to finish in the top ten, and that’s all that I really wanted. It’s what my affirmation was, to finish in the top ten. Then the more distance I have from the Olympics, the more I realize that it doesn’t matter at all and all that matters is how I feel. And I don’t really care about how I finished anymore, I just care about taking the positives from the experience instead of dwelling on the negatives. And that’s what I’m currently working on. Like I’m really capable and awesome, and a tenth place didn’t need to happen to feel that about myself.
It’s still really cool though!
It’s super cool! Total gratitude. I didn’t get lucky, I worked hard and I’m a great athlete, but I do understand that a lot of people have really brutal Olympic experiences, and it puts a mark on their career. I’m really grateful that it just added to my career.
Switching gears, you talked about the Dodgers, have you always been a baseball fan?
I’ve always been a baseball fan, but honestly the longer I’ve worked there the less I’m becoming a baseball fan. I don’t watch as many games anymore. I’ll watch with my dad, but my husband isn’t really into it…and I kind of like not caring about sports! It makes me feel freedom, because it’s consumed so much of my life outside of it. So I kind of revel in that, but if my dad’s watching I love watching with him.
You did your announcing stint in college, and have done the Dodgers thing…you get a call asking you to come do FIL TV. What were your initial thoughts about that?
My first thoughts were “I do not want to go back on tour, I left the sport for a reason and traveling was a really big part of that.” And I figured there’s no way he could expect me to leave my job and clients here to go on the road for three months. I’ve just gotten married…the logistics of it just weren’t going to work.
And then I talked to my husband about it and he tells me “You should do it!” and I was like “Oh, okay…” Then I was just stressed! I really became a skeleton of a human when I was traveling to these places. But then I went into “Yes girl” mode…and I decided I was going to be a yes girl and just say yes!
Also, I figured there was a reason they were calling me to do this and there’s a lot here for me to learn. And it was really cathartic and healing to go back and be around the sport. I realized that a lot of my narratives were completely untrue!
What was that first call like after you got the call from John Morgan…like it’s like announcing but completely different?
I thought the idea of the Studio Show…like it’s about time that this sport gets recognized and these athletes get recognized, and this all sounds really interesting and right up my alley with the stories behind the sport. So I thought it’s about time I thought. These athletes and people involved in the sport don’t get any recognition and there’s no story behind what people are seeing. So I thought it was a wild idea, but John is so convincing and he leads with so much confidence that I figured if he’s over it, something’s going to be put together. I didn’t know what quality or anything, but he sounded really passionate about this and he’s a doer.
The thing is John didn’t know either. He was telling me that it was all still getting okayed, and we weren’t really sure. So I got hired at first just to be a commentator, and John said we’d have to play it out to see what happens. So I’m pushing my job aside for three months to come out for something that we really don’t know what it is. The whole thing was just so ambiguous, but I was a Yes Girl, and went with it. There’s no one else really that could just jump into this and totally enjoy it. But it’s all within my skill set, so let’s just go and don’t’ judge it and go see what happens.
I know the first few weeks were totally on the fly, did that work into your skillset of being able to make it up as you went along?
I think I’ve worked on camera enough years now to stay in my lane and to know what my job is. So when things with this were chaotic it wasn’t because of me, and sometimes things were a bit of a disaster behind the scenes to start. But it was my job to make it look like that wasn’t happening. And I kind of like that, it’s kind of fun and funny and takes the pressure off of me.
So they were happy that I was going up there and doing something with it, and I kind of enjoyed it at first until people started having opinions about it. They were like “Well we thought it would be this…or you need to interview these people not those people…”. People stated critiquing what we were doing, but that’s wen I spoke up and was like “You have no idea…”
The thing is I didn’t have any idea how much it took to put together even a YouTube show. The amount of production and editing and stuff, I’m always just camera facing so I really just learned a lot about how hard people work to get our broadcast going. At first I was into it, then when the peanut gallery started speaking up I wasn’t thrilled with it. But once the second half of the season kicked off and we were getting more of what we needed as a team, and we were able to put together a great production that looked like it was way more than just three of us.
The camera we used was a little Fuji camera. Curtis, the guy who was running the camera, who is brilliant, he was used to doing the connections for John, he’s John’s bobsled guy. So he brought his little Fuji camera and was like “this is going to work great!” And we just had this little handheld and would run around the track, and I would have to come up with like four or five separate segments to shoot!
So I’d have to figure out what people wanted to hear about, and thought about what did I wish people had asked me about when I was an athlete. So things like tricky curves and transitions…how many dinners did I spend talking about whichever curve in Sigulda. So I’d be like “This is what we’re talking about, this curve…” So I just started picking things and figured it would be good!
Something I think a lot of folks enjoyed was the random folks at the track, parents and coaches and whoever, that you found at the track to chat with.
I realized I couldn’t plan these things because people would tell me they didn’t want to be interviewed. Like if I asked people “Hey, between heats at this time can you meet me at the finish dock?” they’d be like “I’m too busy for this.”
Everyone had ideas about how we should get people, and a lot of it was texting folks to meet me down at the finish dock…but if they’re not racing they’re not at the track. Luge is a different culture, nobody’s hanging out at the track after their races or whatever like bobsled. So to organize things just never works.
We’d have 20 minutes to fill at the finish dock, but nobody is at the finish dock everyone is up at the top. But we don’t have connections at the top, so whoever was there wearing a team jacket I’d tell them “here’s what we’re doing, I need you to come talk to me!” So I couldn’t plan because people would get too nervous or think their English isn’t good enough or whatever…but then people would do it and it was a lot of fun!
Who was your favorite interview this season?
I really loved talking to Johannes Ludwig in Oberhof and eating bratwurst with him! I thought it was pretty funny, and cool to get him doing something different. And then I loved talking to the moms, I did a couple of segments of talking to mothers and I think their perspective on what their kids are doing is interesting and kind of important to talk about.
And of course Thomas Bach was pretty funny! So I was getting Josef Fendt (former FIL president) and Thomas Bach (IOC president) mixed up. I just don’t really pay attention to Olympic things anymore, and they told me I was going to interview the IOC president and I was like “Alright, let’s do it” like it was no big deal. But to get him to do an interview was so much effort because he was all over the place!
Then I didn’t realize it was such a big deal until we finally got him and people were telling me “He’s ready!” and it was the worst timing ever, and that’s sort of when I realized it was a really important interview and I need to do some prep!
And people thought it was kind of funny that I was so jokey with him…
But that was part of the fun of it! Nobody interviews Thomas Bach like he’s just a regular dude!
I think because I live in Los Angeles and the Olympic talk isn’t really here. I’m not up to date on anything Olympics and who’s important…people just don’t care about that stuff here. So it didn’t really register how big of a deal it was until afterward and all of the feedback I got.
What was your big takeaway from being the Studio Show host after a season?
I really experienced the joy for other people in the sport. I didn’t have a lot of joy when I was competing, it felt very competitive and kind of like a job. And so I just found myself smiling this year at how many people came up the outrun with massive smiles on their face, and me just being like “Oh, you love this! You really love this! I’m so happy for you!” So that got me fired up, to see the natural joy for people.
It’s really such a beautiful thing, the family of people that this sport attracts. They’re REALLY good people. And when I was competing I didn’t think they were good people, because as an athlete everyone is so competitive. But when you work it, you’re with really just kind and good people.
There’s no money in the sport, so nobody’s there making any money, so it’s just a cultural thing. So you get this really strong German/Italian/Austrian culture of tradition and everything, and I felt all these warm and fuzzies being back around it. Like these are all such good people who are working so hard to make nothing. And that’s the most beautiful story of the whole thing, and what fires me up to be around that! Just to see the pure intention of wanting to go fast, and wanting your athletes to go fast. Because you feel joy doing it, even when it’s a blizzard outside and it’s below 0 in Lativa and the cameraman is in jeans and he’s just happy to be there!
It’s all really crazy, but it really instilled that it’s just a beautiful thing to just be around different people and different cultures, and it’s such a unique experience. It really just refilled why people do it.
It makes sense for skeleton and bobsled because they get involved later in life so it’s a really intentional decision to get into it, and it’s not really the same family because they didn’t get involved as teenagers together. They weren’t 12 years old crashing in Königssee, and now I’m here 20 years later with those same people and there’s just something really special about that for me.
So I think that was my big takeaway from that. Just having gratitude toward the community.
With that, did you have any itch to get back on a sled anywhere? Some of your Olympic competitors and teammates are still out there!
I did have a thought…like that’s the thing: I don’t feel the competitive spirit. I was just out there trying to survive and get two clean runs, and I never got to Madeleine Egle or Julia Taubitz’s level where they just have this grit about them where it’s worth the extra thousandth. For me, it was never in my bones like that, I was there to see my friends. I was there to get the pretzel at the finish house!
So now that I’m back there I still kind of feel that way: I’m just here to enjoy my life, and get paid, and see my friends!
So I’ve learned through this that I never really cared enough. But that’s beautiful and that’s okay too. I think it messed with me when I left, like why did I leave so young? But seeing these women, seeing them so committed to the send, I really respect that. And it makes sense why I had friction and why I retired so early, I just wasn’t committed like that and I had forces asking me to be committed, and I WANTED to be committed, but my soul just didn’t have it in it.
Finally, now that you’re seeing them not as a competitor, what was your favorite track to visit on tour this year?
St. Moritz, it was so warm! It was after a long couple months, and I realized the warmth was really important to me and I really can’t believe I did a winter sport. Like it was a nice reminder that I really do love the warmth!
