It all began with a girl who had polio and a boy who was chubby and clumsy. It continued with a woman who skated in her mother's home-made costumes and later with a woman who gave the country a new hairdo. It almost ended with a plane crash. Some 43 years after it all began, America's love affair with figure skating and figure skaters -- particularly of the female variety -- is still going strong.
Go figure (pardon the pun). American skaters still haven't quite figured out this ice dancing business on the Olympic level. They're only a little better when it comes to pairs skating. But somehow America, which doesn't know the difference between a toe loop and a Froot Loop, keeps turning out Olympic champion figure skaters.America will crown national champions in the Delta Center today (hint: Michelle Kwan and Michael Weiss) at the U.S. championships, which is another name for Olympic Preview. When you're the U.S. champion, it's almost like being named Olympic champion. Pencil in Kwan and Weiss for 2002 in Salt Lake City. Today is a practice run.
The United States, which has never won a gold medal in ice dancing or pairs skating, has somehow produced six Olympic champions in women's figure skating -- Tenley Albright, Carol Heiss, Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill, Kristi Yamaguchi and Tara Lipinksi -- and 16 medalists in the last 13 Winter Olympics. American women have been shut out of a medal only four times in Olympic history (once because they had no entries).
American men haven't quite matched the success of the women -- they've been shut out of the last two Games -- but they have produced five gold medalists -- Dick Button (twice), Hayes Jenkins, David Jenkins, Scott Hamilton and Brian Boitano. That gives the United States 12 gold medals in figure skating since 1948.
Even when Americans haven't won the Olympic title, they made their mark and gave the sport a swift kick in the sequins to grab the public's attention at a time when it was needed. The Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan feud is the best thing that's happened to ice skating since Sonja Henie.
American men didn't win a single medal in figure skating in the first six Olympics, and then Button arrived on the scene. When he was 12 years old, his first teacher took in his lack of coordination and his 162 pounds lumped onto a 5-foot-2 frame and announced, "You'll never learn to skate -- not until hell freezes over."
Four years later he was national champion. He won the Olympic gold medal in 1948 and 1952 and revolutionized the sport. He was the first to perform in competition the double axle, three consecutive double loop jumps, the triple loop jump and the so-called Button camel -- all standard fare in today's competition.
American women didn't win a single gold medal in the first eight Winter Olympics. Then along came Albright. She was ordinary at first. At the age of 11 she contracted a relatively mild strain of polio that weakened her muscles but didn't cause paralysis. Doctors eventually allowed her to resume skating to build her strength, and she became a national champion.
She won the '56 Olympics after narrowly dodging another medical problem. Two weeks before the '56 Olympics, she tripped on a rut in the ice during a practice session. Her left skate slashed into her right ankle, severing her boot and a vein and cutting into the bone itself. She won the gold medal anyway, with American Carol Heiss second.
Albright went on to become a renowned surgeon and a pioneer in the sports medicine field. Heiss went on to win the next Olympics, and America's dominance of figure skating was under way.
And then almost exactly 38 years ago -- the day after Valentine's Day, 1961 -- a plane carrying virtually every top figure skater and figure skating coach in the United States crashed in Belgium en route to the world championships, killing all 73 on board, including 34 coaches, skaters, officials and family members. It was widely believed that American figure skating wouldn't recover from the tragedy for years.
Three years later Fleming, whose coach had been killed in the crash, finished sixth in the Olympics, and countryman Scott Allen was third. Fleming, whose father worked two jobs to support her career and her mother made her competition costumes to save money, won the gold medal in 1968.
Hamill carried on the U.S. tradition in 1976. She overcome a bad case of stage fright, which had cost her titles in the world championships, to win the gold medal in 1976 with a performance so convincing that all nine judges ranked her first, and it took three girls to help her pick up all the flowers that were tossed onto the ice by the crowd. Meanwhile, American girls got a haircut -- Hamilton's trademark wedge 'do.
And so the tradition has marched on, each skater influencing the next in ways they never could know. Hamilton's popularity inspired the creation of the Dorothy doll. A girl in California owned one and kept it close by her side. Her name was Kristi Yamaguchi.