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Gracie Hunt on Chiefs season ahead of Super Bowl 2023 vs. Eagles
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Gracie Hunt felt the “tense vitality” build up in the final seconds of the 2023 AFC Championship game.
With Kansas Metropolis and the Cincinnati Bengals tied at 20 late within the fourth quarter, Hunt — the daughter of Chiefs owner Clark Hunt — watched from Arrowhead Stadium as kicker Harrison Butker lined up for a 45-yard discipline purpose try that might ship the Chiefs to Tremendous Bowl 2023 following final 12 months’s extra time heartbreak. As Butker’s kick sailed by the uprights, Hunt recalled a scene of “absolute mayhem” unfolding throughout her.
“There was a lot tense vitality as all of us ready for Harrison to take that kick, however deep down, I felt that he was going to make it,” the 23-year-old Hunt informed The Submit.
“As soon as the sphere purpose went by, it was absolute mayhem, we had been leaping round and hugging each other and we glance in one another’s eyes and are like, ‘We’re going to the Tremendous Bowl!’ It takes it just a little bit to set in as a result of it’s so surreal in that second, but it surely was probably the most pure pleasure and probably the most pure pleasure.”
A lot has modified for Hunt because the Chiefs final gained the Tremendous Bowl in February 2020, after they defeated the San Francisco 49ers in Miami, 31-20. The lifelong athlete, whose school soccer hopes had been derailed after sustaining 4 concussions, then segued into pageantry and was crowned Miss Kansas USA in April 2021, 28 years after her mom, Tavia Hunt, held the identical title.
Hunt went on to partake in Miss USA in November 2021 and placed in the Top 16. Though the Particular Olympics ambassador has moved on from pageants, she’s now satisfying her aggressive urge for food with marathon operating after collaborating in her first race “very spontaneously” this previous July.
“I signed up for my first marathon about 13 hours earlier than the race began,” stated Hunt, who had came across an indication for the occasion after mountain climbing along with her mother.
“I had by no means run in a registered race earlier than this level and had by no means run greater than 13 miles consecutively, and that was on treadmill a number of years earlier than… [I] took an opportunity, registered at about 5 p.m. that night, and ran it at 6 a.m. the subsequent day, and completed it in three hours and 45 minutes, and that’s what began my marathon profession.”
Now set to run within the Boston Marathon this April, Hunt is adapting to a brand new model of coaching, one which differs from her soccer days and pageant preparation.
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“After I performed soccer, I beloved to run to complement to my cardio for my endurance on the sphere. For marathons, it’s completely different since you actually have to show your physique the best way to deal with for much longer durations of exertion,” Hunt stated.
“You need to construct up a tolerance and practice your self to deal with it, it’s quite a lot of common 13-mile runs, and 14-mile runs, so it’s been very completely different. I’ll say coming off Miss USA coaching, it’s very completely different however I additionally find it irresistible as a result of it’s allowed me to return to my aggressive roots.”
When competing for Miss USA, Hunt enlisted strolling coach Kristen Bradford to help in what she described as her “most difficult” a part of the competitors.
“In the event you’ve seen ‘Miss Congeniality,’ when [Michael Caine’s character, Victor Melling] tells [Sandra Bullock’s character, Gracie Hart] to glide, it isn’t simple if you’re strolling in these stilettos on stage and also you don’t take into consideration issues like the load of a gown, and if it has a slit or not, and the way that impacts your weight and your motion,” Hunt detailed to The Post in December 2021.
Although Hunt has a “entire line-up of bucket listing marathons” in her again pocket, for now, she and her household are centered on Tremendous Bowl 2023 in Glendale, Arizona, the place she hopes to proceed one thing of a pregame custom along with her dad.
“I’ve grown up tailgating with him earlier than all of the video games and going out and seeing the followers as a result of their vitality and pleasure and enthusiasm is unmatched within the league, so we had been out earlier than the [AFC Championship] recreation and it was bitterly chilly, and it was simply me and my dad hanging out with the followers, and it was such a particular factor as a result of I’ve grown up doing it with him, and I do know he grew up doing it together with his dad [the late Lamar Hunt],” Hunt stated.
“I do know that it means rather a lot to him to spend that point with the followers, in order that’s one thing we’ll undoubtedly be doing on Tremendous Bowl Sunday is tailgating with our superb Chiefs followers, so we’re actually wanting ahead to that.”
Very like how Kansas Metropolis opened the season in Arizona with a dominant 44-21 win over the Cardinals, Hunt and the remainder of Chiefs Kingdom need to shut out the 12 months in a similar way.
“We’re excited to hopefully end our season with a win in Arizona similar to we began it with a win in Arizona,” she stated. “I’m fairly certain all of Kansas Metropolis is coming to Arizona, so I hope it’s able to be flooded with crimson and gold.”
Super Bowl 2023 between the Chiefs and Eagles will get underway on Sunday, Feb. 12.
