Figure Skating - Part G - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

(Based on the book, “Winter Olympics:  An Insider’s Guide to the Legends, the Lore, and the Games”, Vancouver Edition, copyright 2008 by Ron C. Judd)

Tenley Albright – America’s Gold Medal Icebreaker:

Days before she was to take the ice at the Cortina d’Ampezzo Olympics of 1956, Tenley Albright was practicing outdoors when one of her skates hit a rut in the ice.  She stumbled, with one skate striking the other – and slashing clean through, slicing her ankle to the bone.

Her father, a surgeon, rushed to Italy to sew her up.  But she feared that she would not be able to compete.  Somehow, when the time arrived, she decided the foot was stable enough to skate.  And, she performed flawlessly, holding a small lead over teammate Carol Heiss entering the final skate.

When she took the ice that day, a magical thing happened:  As she skated to “The Barcarolle”, a waltz from the opera The Tales of Hoffman, the large crowd began singing the words to the orchestral theme – an international sing-along, right there in a little mountain village.  “It was wonderful,” she said of the massive chorus at the outdoor ice rink in the shadow of the Dolomites.  “It made me forget about my injury.”

When the scores were tallied, she had won the gold medal handily – the first by an American female skater.

Fifty years later, Albright, who went on to become a distinguished surgeon and cancer researcher in Boston, said that gold medal skate still seemed like only yesterday.

“This enormous feeling just sort of welled up in me,” she said.  “There was the most wonderful feeling of camaraderie.  It made me feel like the sport was an international language.”

It was the end of an era.  The next Winter Games, at Squaw Valley in 1960, were the last to stage figure skating outdoors – and the first to be televised.  Everything changed after that, with skaters facing increased pressure from fans and the media.

Not that first-time gold medalists ever got a pass on press scrutiny.

“We thought there was plenty at that time,” Albright said.  “We did have Movietone News, you know!”

copyright 2014, Anne Shier.  All rights reserved.