Halfpipe star Hannah Teter takes the role model thing seriously

Reporting from Vancouver, Canada —  Hannah Teter didn’t waste any time drawing her line in the snow.

The defending Olympic gold medalist in the women’s halfpipe was talking about what she was going to drink and eat at the Olympics and mentioned a certain fast-food franchise. You know, that place with the golden (not medal) arches.

“NOT,” she said, grinning.

She felt that way long before the movie “Super Size Me” and hasn’t gobbled down a Big Mac or anything on the menu in 10 years.

“I have seen parts of it,” Teter said. “That’s like a really mellow way to tell people to stay away from that food, a baby step of motivating people. It shows what it does to you but not where it comes from, which is really the bad part.”

In the self-proclaimed Greenest Olympics . . . in perhaps the greenest province of Canada . . . introducing (perhaps) the greenest-minded Olympic athlete in the house.

Teter, who will battle American teammates Kelly Clark and Gretchen Bleiler on Thursday in the women’s halfpipe, just doesn’t talk a gold-medal game.

She backs it up with gold-medal action, recently donating her winnings from an event at Park City, Utah to assist earthquake victims in Haiti; she will direct any Olympic earnings there as well.

Her charity, Hannah’s Gold, has endeavored to bring clean water to a village in Kenya. Some of the charitable works are done with a wink and a smile -- for example, her recent underwear line, Sweet Cheeks Panties.

“I just want to do another charity item that everybody needs, everybody likes,” she said. “I want to make money for third-world-country kids, and I need to be smart about how to do it

“I sell maple syrup and it does pretty well, but not everybody wants maple syrup.”

Teter, 23, is outspoken about what athletes should be doing, saying she opts to cross the line, but not “too much.” She did catch some heat for posing in the recent Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

“I’d just like to see athletes awake. And aware,” she said. “There’s so much going on and so much to know. . . . We stay in our little boxes and don’t think much about the outside world. Ninety percent of the world’s forests have been cut down, and animals are going extinct every day and our ecosystem is basically going to. . . .

“If we keep on that path, then bad things are going to happen and people will be wishing, like, ‘Why wasn’t I more aware at a time when I could have made changes?’ Instead of, ‘Now, it’s too late.’ ”

Bleiler, Clark and Teter went one-two-three at the Winter X Games in Aspen last month, and it is not a reach at all to think they could sweep the podium at Cypress Mountain.

Clark won the Olympics in 2002 and finished fourth in 2006. Bleiler was a silver medalist in 2006 behind Teter. Torah Bright of Australia, who missed the X Games because of two concussions, represents the top international competition.

The job is a career but remains a passion for Teter after eight years of competition.

“I snowboard because I love it. It’s just a cool way to be out there and doing something different instead of going to college,” she said. “I was way more interested in being out in nature and having that be my job.

“And then just recently I realized what a platform it has created and I acknowledge it is there.”

lisa.dillman@latimes.com

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