Gracie Hunt felt the “tense energy” building up in the final seconds of the 2023 AFC Championship game.
With Kansas City and the Cincinnati Bengals tied at 20 late in 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 field goal attempt that could send the Chiefs to Super Bowl 2023 following last year’s overtime heartbreak. As Butker’s kick sailed through the uprights, Hunt recalled a scene of “absolute mayhem” unfolding all around her.
“There was so much tense energy as we all prepared for Harrison to take that kick, but deep down, I felt that he was going to make it,” the 23-year-old Hunt told The Post.
“Once the field goal went through, it was absolute mayhem, we were jumping around and hugging one another and we look in each other’s eyes and are like, ‘We’re going to the Super Bowl!’ It takes it a little bit to set in because it’s so surreal in that moment, but it was the most pure excitement and the most pure joy.”
Much has changed for Hunt since the Chiefs last won the Super Bowl in February 2020, when they defeated the San Francisco 49ers in Miami, 31-20. The lifelong athlete, whose college soccer hopes were derailed after sustaining four concussions, then segued into pageantry and was crowned Miss Kansas USA in April 2021, 28 years after her mother, Tavia Hunt, held the same title.
Hunt went on to partake in Miss USA in November 2021 and placed in the Top 16. Although the Special Olympics ambassador has moved on from pageants, she’s now satisfying her competitive appetite with marathon running after taking part in her first race “very spontaneously” this past July.
“I signed up for my first marathon about 13 hours before the race started,” said Hunt, who had stumbled on a sign for the event after hiking with her mom.
“I had never run in a registered race before this point and had never run more than 13 miles consecutively, and that was on treadmill several years before… [I] took a chance, registered at about 5 p.m. that evening, and ran it at 6 a.m. the next day, and finished it in three hours and 45 minutes, and that is what started my marathon career.”
Now set to run in the Boston Marathon this April, Hunt is adapting to a new style of training, one that differs from her soccer days and pageant preparation.
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“When I played soccer, I loved to run to supplement to my cardio for my endurance on the field. For marathons, it’s different because you really have to teach your body how to handle much longer durations of exertion,” Hunt said.
“You have to build up a tolerance and train yourself to handle it, it’s a lot of regular 13-mile runs, and 14-mile runs, so it’s been very different. I will say coming off Miss USA training, it’s very different but I also love it because it’s allowed me to go back to my competitive roots.”
When competing for Miss USA, Hunt enlisted walking coach Kristen Bradford to assist in what she described as her “most challenging” part of the competition.
“If you’ve seen ‘Miss Congeniality,’ when [Michael Caine’s character, Victor Melling] tells [Sandra Bullock’s character, Gracie Hart] to glide, it is not easy when you’re walking in those stilettos on stage and you don’t think about things like the weight of a dress, and if it has a slit or not, and how that affects your weight and your movement,” Hunt detailed to The Post in December 2021.
Though Hunt has a “whole line-up of bucket list marathons” in her back pocket, for now, she and her family are focused on Super Bowl 2023 in Glendale, Arizona, where she hopes to continue something of a pregame tradition with her dad.
“I’ve grown up tailgating with him before all the games and going out and seeing the fans because their energy and excitement and enthusiasm is unmatched in the league, so we were out before the [AFC Championship] game and it was bitterly cold, and it was just me and my dad hanging out with the fans, and it was such a special thing because I’ve grown up doing it with him, and I know he grew up doing it with his dad [the late Lamar Hunt],” Hunt said.
“I know that it means a lot to him to spend that time with the fans, so that’s something we’ll definitely be doing on Super Bowl Sunday is tailgating with our amazing Chiefs fans, so we’re really looking forward to that.”
Much like how Kansas City opened the season in Arizona with a dominant 44-21 win over the Cardinals, Hunt and the rest of Chiefs Kingdom are looking to close out the year in a similar fashion.
“We’re excited to hopefully finish our season with a win in Arizona just like we started it with a win in Arizona,” she said. “I’m pretty sure all of Kansas City is coming to Arizona, so I hope it’s ready to be flooded with red and gold.”
Super Bowl 2023 between the Chiefs and Eagles gets underway on Sunday, Feb. 12.