Dagny McKinley spread a lot of love Thursday at the Winter X Games, but fell short of her goal to set the world record for most hugs given in a 24-hour period.
The Steamboat Springs woman, a writer and dog-sledding guide by trade, hugged 2,352 people at the entrance of the action sports competition between 8:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. Her goal was 5,001 hugs, which would have topped the Guinness world record mark by one embrace.
Though she won’t be enshrined in the Guinness annals alongside the guy with the world’s longest fingernails and the record for longest tandem ride on a seesaw, McKinley, 36, said the attempt was worth it.
“It was so much fun to see so many people smile and get excited about hugging,” she said Friday morning. “This just means that I have to come back and try it again. And keep trying until I break the record.”
For now, she said she’s looking at Aspen’s Labor Day jazz festival as a venue for her next attempt. If she can’t do it then, she suggested perhaps she’ll try again on Saturday of next year’s X Games, when more spectators and potential huggers will be shuffling through the gates.
“Aspen is a very hug-friendly place,” she smiled.
During her 13-hour cuddlefest on Thursday, McKinley kept two witnesses on hand — both her co-workers at Steamboat’s Grizzle-T Dog Sledding — who logged the names of the hugged and took their signatures. They also kept a video camera running to capture the event — evidence that would have been sent to Guinness’s London headquarters for verification if McKinley had been able to embosom 5,000-plus people.
A “hug,” by Guinness standards, consists of both arms folding around both huggers’ backs — a definition that needn’t be explained to the enthusiastic embracers McKinley met at Buttermilk Mountain.
“Hi!” she greeted stranger after stranger after stranger. “I’m attempting to break the world record for most hugs in a 24-hour-period. Would you like a hug?”
Most responded by simply smiling and opening their arms.
A kid in leopard-spot dyed and spiked hair, carrying a snowboard and wearing neon frogskin sunglasses leapt in the air, “Yes!”
A rotund and grey-bearded man donning a Stetson hat and a full-body Polaris snowmobile suit grinned and muttered, “Of course.”
Smokey the Bear stopped in for a hug on the way to his post at the U.S. Forest Service trivia booth on the X Games pavilion.
McKinley said that some people turned her down and told her not to touch them. But this reporter, who received hug number 1,100 or so, did not witness any such snubs.
After 10 hours of hugging, McKinley’s enthusiasm remained unflappable. She bounced on the balls of her feet and twirled her sparkle-beaded skirt while clapping her mittened hands together in the same way a lot of folks do when they want to stay warm after nightfall in winter here. But McKinley gives the impression that she may always hop like that, no matter the temperature, in the same way she appears never to drop the unaffected smile that turns up under her eyes, colored the same blue as the Huskies she cares for in Steamboat.
It was those Huskies, she explained, that inspired her to spend a day hugging strangers.
“I have a few dogs that hug me everyday,” she said. “It’s so beautiful. I guess I wanted to pay that forward.”
Last year, McKinley published a coffee table book about those sled dogs titled “Wild Hearts: Dog-Sledding the Rockies.” In addition to guiding sled tours, she blogs and writes a column for the Steamboat Local about a fictional character named “Audrey Rose,” who she says represents “the barefooted free spirit in all of us.”
A column about “Audrey Rose” attempting to break the world record for hugging in Aspen, McKinley says, is forthcoming.