Very early yesterday morning, U.S. luger Kate Hansen had the Internet going nuts thanks a video that she put up on her Twitter account. The video, which you can see below, featured what appeared to be a wolf walking through what appeared to be the hallway inside of her building in the Olympic Village in Sochi:
There was a catch, though. The video wasn't actually filmed in Sochi. And it also wasn't filmed by Hansen. Rather, it was filmed by Jimmy Kimmel, who asked Hansen to post the video to Twitter in order to get people riled up. And while it did serve its intended purpose—the video was posted on many blogs on Thursday and appeared on lots of TV news programs—the United States Luge Association was not amused by Hansen's tweet. And she could face some punishment for making it look like a wolf was outside of her room in Sochi.
"I'm not sure about repercussions," USA Luge spokesman Sandy Caligiore said after it was revealed that the video was part of a hoax, "but I can tell you that our organization is not happy with the incident. Sochi problems? Sochi fail? That's not USA Luge speaking."
Hansen spoke with Kimmel yesterday and admitted that the hoax caused more problems than she expected it to.
"Honestly, there was a little more backlash than I thought there'd be," she said. "Security started freaking out, because technically there was a breach. You know, athlete safety. It kind of went a little crazy over here."
Check out Kimmel and Hansen talking about the hoax in the clip below:
Are you impressed that Kimmel was able to pull something like this off again?
[via USA Today]
