Joey Hansen never set out to be an Olympic athlete.
He grew up in Bakersfield, California, playing baseball and football, and enrolled at Oregon State University as a freshman in 1997. He wanted to be an engineer.
One sentence changed his life as he was walking around the quad.
“The freshmen men’s and women’s rowing coaches had a table set up with a banner talking about rowing,” Hansen said. “The coach asked, ‘Hey man, you look like an athlete. Do you play any sports here?’”
He didn’t, and wasn’t planning on it, either. Hansen just wanted to focus on his degree. But at 6-foot-7 with a strong frame, he was built for rowing. He joined. And by the time he left Oregon State, he was a three-time Pac-10 all-conference selection, well on his way to a gold medal at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.
Hansen’s medal in the men’s eight is one of 13 gold medals won by athletes who’ve attended Oregon State. Gymnast Jade Carey, currently a senior at Oregon State, will be competing next week to win her second after taking gold in the 2020 summer games in Tokyo.
While Carey may be the only current Beaver competing in Paris, Oregon State’s impact on the games goes beyond just the hardware.
Oregon State’s biggest contribution to the Olympics came in 1968, when Oregon State student Dick Fosbury revolutionized track and field with his new technique of jumping over the high jump bar backwards with an arched back. The method was completely different from the previous method where athletes dove over and twisted their body as they cleared the bar.
“It’s the most effective way to jump,” Oregon State track and field coach Louie Quintana said. “Even the coach here at OSU didn’t want him to do it. He said it wouldn’t last, that it was a novelty.” When Fosbury jumped an Olympic record of 2.24 meters to win gold at the 1968 Mexico City games, that novelty became the standard.
“Now it’s how athletes have jumped their whole lives,” he said. “They wouldn’t necessarily know that it’s even called the Fosbury Flop.”
A statue commemorating Fosbury’s iconic jump was built on the Oregon State campus in 2018. He died in 2023 at the age of 76. Quintana said his legacy lives on in the Oregon State track program that hopes to place several athletes in the 2028 games in Los Angeles.
“I can tell by how someone moves if they’re going to be really good in a sport,” he said. “But to take the next step into becoming an Olympian, that’s really tough to find. That’s so hard to quantify. It’s a whole package. It’s a mindset.”
Hansen can relate. All of the hard work and grueling hours paid off for him when he was offered a spot on the national team after graduation. He said it took a bit for the team to get their bearings and find their rhythm but they continued to work and progress each year.
Hansen spent endless hours in the gym, pushing his body to the max.
“You will never find me on a rowing machine today,” Hansen said. “There’s no way I’m getting in one of those things. I beat my head against those damn machines for years.”
The work paid off, though, as Hansen and the national team steadily got better at the annual World Rowing Championships and then the Athens Olympics.
“It was almost like a fairy tale,” he said. “In 2001, we got fourth place, so we didn’t medal. In 2002, we got third. In 2003, we got second.”
And in 2004 Hansen’s dreams became a reality. He and his American teammates missed the opening ceremonies so they could be at their best, and they won their first heat, setting an Olympic record in the men’s eight in a narrow victory over Canada. The win solidified their place in the finals, where USA’s defeat over the Netherlands gave Hansen, now a 44-year-old with a career in manufacturing, a feeling he’s never been able to recreate.
“Your heart rate is well above 235, 240 in that last 45 seconds,” Hansen said. “It’s another feeling, man.”
— Levi Sparks, Rex Putnam High School
—Garrett Arendt, West Linn High School