Hansen, Kieran

BORN NOVEMBER 16TH 1971 in Sydney Australia, Hansen is a three-time Olympian who competed in the 1992, '94, and '98 Winter Games. His Olympic dream began from as young as six in Little Athletics but, by the time he was 11 or 12, he realised he was not going to make it in track and field. His sister played ice hockey, and his mother was learning to figure skate, so he followed them down to the ice rink. [2]

He joined the Blacktown ice hockey club in Sydney's west, where the coach told him he should learn to skate. He enrolled in the Learn to Skate program at the Canterbury Ice Rink which was run by Maggie Holland, coach of the state speed skating team. He took up ice racing with the Blacktown Ice Racers at the same time as ice hockey, although initially speed skating did not hold his interest ("they wore tights"). A fast skater, he moved across a few years later.

Hansen made the national speed skating team in 1988 when he was 16, in the company of 8 or 9 racers, including John Kah and Steven Bradbury, all of whom Holland had focused on the Olympics. He described his early years as "fairly structured training program, we had a national coach. Speed skating is an interesting sport, even back through the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties. That's one of the things I really enjoyed about the sport.

"It had a deep, even rich, history in Australia, and a ... I wouldn't say big community... but it had a strong community, and there was always the dreams of any of the elite athletes or top-level speed skaters to go to the Olympics, and that time before '94, '92, the dream would have been to be a long track speed skater, and short track was a path through to that. But thankfully for us, short track became an Olympic sport, and we were allowed to focus on that and train out of Australia."

Over 100 skaters competed at the national championships of the time, providing a sufficient base for good quality competition. Hansen placed first at the World Championships at home in Sydney with the Men’s 5000m Relay team. "Everything just fell into place," he recalls. "Our dreams were coming true in front of us". It was a landmark victory for Australia, the first win in a world championship in a winter sport, setting in motion the success of Australia's first Winter Olympics medal.

Holland was appointed Short Track Coach for the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville, the first Olympics for the Short Track discipline. The relay team of Hansen, Murtha, Bradbury (emergency), John Kah and Richard Nizielski finished 7th/9, their chances of an Olympic medal ruined by a fall in the semi-final. Later that year, they finished ninth at the Worlds in Denver. "It was a great opportunity for an athlete to have an Olympic Games come around within a 2 year period. We got back from Albertville and trained very hard," recalls Hansen.

At the Worlds in Beijing, the team placed third to qualify for the 1994 Winter Olympics, but Hansen returned with Glandular Fever and an enlarged spleen. He had to make sure he did not over trainat the expense of his health, but he managed through, "I think to the long-term detriment of my skating career. After Lillehammer, I never really got back to being myself". A lot of teams had caught up by the 1994 Games, but Hansen, Murtha, Nizielski and Steven Bradbury won bronze in the short track relay to become Australia's first Winter Olympic medallists. Hansen also finished 11th in the Men's 1000m individual event and 23rd in the 500m.

A scholarship from the Westpac bank allowed him to work a shorter day. He sometimes trained with his Sydney teammate Andrew Murtha, but Bradbury lived in Brisbane as did Nizielski after moving across from Perth. John Kah, the emergency, lived in Adelaide. As a unit, the team only got together on long weekends, four or five times a year. [1]

At the '98 Games at Nagano "The team had changed, we lost Andrew Murtha and Johnny Kah, and physically I had my own issues to deal with...It was actually just quite an achievement to qualify, only the top 8 teams go through from the World Championships the year before... and Short Track had become even more competitive... [but] it was a dream for me to go to three games". Hansen, Bradbury and Nizielski returned with new teammate, Richard Goerlitz, but finished third in the qualifying race, missing the final by one place. They were still two seconds faster than their 1994 medal performance.

Kieran works in finance, moving to Singapore for 9 years where he spent time with the ice racing association. He coached, refereed and helped run racing competitions, returning to Sydney in 2016.