CAROL HEISS

Olympic Champion, 1960
World Champion, 1956-60

Today you can see Carol Heiss at major competitions coaching her skaters. When she competed herself, she put together the best record any woman in North America thanks to her dynamic and athletic skating. Heiss attacked her performances with lots of energy and became one of the first woman to master a double axel.

DOROTHY HAMILL

Olympic Champion, 1976
World Champion, 1976

Often in practice Dorothy Hamill seriously doubted her skating talent and she battled her nerves at competition. But none of that insecurity ever showed. The athletic Hamill combined the whole polished package- fabulous spins, great jumps- with elegant choreography.

"Dot" is also known for inventing a spin called the Hamill Camel. It's a variation on the camel spin, in which the skater spins on one leg while the other leg is stretched out behind at 90 degrees. When Hamill competed, she was the best spiner in the world. That could be because of a rink she practised on in her early career. The roof of the rink was too low to allow Hamill to jump, so she practised her spins instead. "I did a million spins," she said.

PEGGY FLEMING

Olympic Champion, 1968
World Champion, 1966-68

When Peggy Fleming was 12, a plane heading from the United States to Czechoslovakia for the 1961 World Championships crashed, and the entire U.S. figure skating team was killed. Fleming went instantly from being a top junior to becoming the skating hope of her country.

Despite the pressure and her young age, Fleming proudly represented the U.S. at international events. A calm and shy contender, she looked delicate but was incredibly strong. In the days when athletic skating was more in style, Fleming skated with the grace of a ballet dancer, yet could match her competitors jump for jump.

Fleming now puts her skating knowledge to use on television, where she
commentates at big skating competitions.

PETRA BURKA

Olympic Bronze,1964
World Champion, 1965

After becoming World Champion in 1965, Petra Burka was voted Canadian female athlete of the year two years in a row. Burka was a consistent skater who loved to jump. In the days when few woman even attempted triple jumps, she became the first woman to land a triple salchow in competition.

Karen Magnussen

Olympic Silver, 1972
World Champion, 1973

Karen Magnussen displayed all the qualities of a champion. An athletic skater with strong jumps and good spins, she combined these elements in polished programs set to exiting music. Magnussen could also keep calm under pressure and had the ability to peak at just the right time.

Barbara Ann Scott

Olympic Champion, 1948
World Champion, 1947, 1948

Barbara Ann Scott was the first North American skater to win the Olympic and World gold medals. At the time she skated, competitions were held outside. Scott was a winner because she could concentrate and perform consistently despite bad weather or poor ice conditions.

JANET LYNN
Janet Lynn Nowicki, known athletically as Janet Lynn, is a figure skater and an Olympic bronze medalist.
Born Janet Nowicki in Chicago on April 6, 1953, the future champion began to skate almost as soon as she could walk and took part in her first exhibition performance at the age of four in a group number at Chicago Stadium. By age seven, she was living away from home part of the year, staying with the slightly older skater Jada Steinke to be close to her coach Slavka Kohout, who worked out of Rockton, Illinois, but her close-knit family was never far away. She used her middle name Lynn instead of Nowicki, which was constantly being misspelled and mispronounced. Janet was always forthright about the name change; in her own mind her name was still Nowicki.
In 1964, at 11, she became the youngest skater to pass the rigorous eighth and final test administered by the United States Figure Skating Association, and two years later she won the U.S. Junior Ladies Championship at Berkeley, California. At that competition she landed a triple salchow jump, which at the time was rarely performed by female skaters, giving early evidence of a jumping ability that was to thrill audiences and impress judges for years to come. In later years she was also one of the first female skaters to include a triple toe loop in her programs.
Moving up to senior level, Lynn gained 3rd place at the 1968 U.S. Championships, which qualified her to compete at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France, where she placed 9th. At the time she was 14 years old and it was her first major international competition. She also placed 9th at her first World Championships in 1968.
She vaulted into 1st place at the 1969 U.S. Championships, bypassing her competition. That year she beat Canada's Karen Magnussen for the North American title but had disappointing results in the World Championships. Despite the absence of both Magnussen and Czechoslovakia's Hana Maskova due to injuries, Lynn was unable to do better than 5th place, falling behind Julie Lynn Holmes, in 4th, whom she had beaten for the national title. Gabriele Seyfert of East Germany took the gold medal.
The World Championships were to remain a problem for her. Although she continued to reign as U.S. Champion, something always seemed to go wrong at Worlds. In 1970, Seyfert and Austria's Beatrix Schuba were again in 1st and 2nd place, while Holmes moved up to 3rd and Lynn dropped back to 6th. Part of the problem was an inconsistency in compulsory figures, which meant that she always had to make up ground in the free skating. Lynn made an effort to remedy this weakness by working with the great New York-based coach Pierre Brunet, who had previously had World Champions Carol Heiss and Donald Jackson under his tutelage. At the 1971 World Championships, she placed 5th in figures and skated well in the free skating to place 4th overall, while Schuba took the gold, Holmes the silver and Magnussen the bronze.
The year 1972 brought both World and Olympic challenges. Lynn beat Holmes for the national title for the fourth year in a row, and there were widespread predictions that she would finally take not only World but Olympic gold, especially because of Schuba's weakness in free skating. Schuba's lackluster performance at Lyon, France the previous year had even drawn boos, but she won the championship based on her enormous lead in the compulsory figures.
At the 1972 Winter Olympics at Sapporo, Japan, Lynn placed a disappointing 4th in the compulsory figures. Once again Schuba's technical mastery in this discipline was very strong; although she placed only 7th in the free skating, her large lead from the figures enabled her to take the gold medal. Magnussen won the silver and Lynn was left with the bronze, an order of finish repeated at the 1972 World Championships in Calgary, Canada.

Lynn with coach Slavka Kohout at the 1973 World Championships
By this time, international-level disappointments had taken their toll, and Lynn was also struggling with her weight and lack of motivation that nearly caused her to quit skating. But she had always had a very strong Christian faith and a belief that God had given her a gift for skating with an intention that she use it. After considerable soul-searching, she continued, taking her fifth National title in 1973. With Schuba's retirement and the devaluation of compulsory figures caused by the addition of the short program to competitions, only Magnussen seemed to stand in her way.
At the 1973 World Championships, Lynn skated her best figures ever, taking 2nd in that discipline, but in the newly-introduced short program of required jumps and spins, which she had been expected to win, two falls landed her in 12th position. She came out on top in free skating, but the terrible short program kept her from the gold. A silver medal would mark the end of Lynn's amateur career.
Lynn's international-level travails had not dimmed her country's affection for her. Her popularity was such that the Ice Follies offered her a three-year contract for $1,455,000, which made her the highest-paid female professional athlete of the time. She proved to be the kind of draw she was expected to be, putting the Ice Follies on a much firmer basis in its rivalry with the Ice Capades. In 1974, Janet Lynn finally took the top spot in a World competition, becoming the World Professional Champion in an event created by promoter Dick Button to showcase her.

Lynn in 1982
Lynn's professional career was cut short after only two years by problems with allergy-related asthma exacerbated by the cold, damp air in skating rinks. In 1975, she retired from skating, married Rick Salomon, and started a family.
In the early 1980's, with her asthma under control, she returned to skate professionally for a few years. She again appeared in Button's professional competitions and co-starred with John Curry in his made-for-TV ice ballet, "The Snow Queen".
Over the years, Lynn has also worked as a Christian motivational speaker.
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Legacy
The contrast between Lynn and Beatrix Schuba was one of the reasons why the International Skating Union devaluated the weight of compulsory figures in competition by introducing the short program. Since compulsory figures were rarely televised and were not well-understood by the general public, television audiences were confused and angry when superior free skaters such as Lynn consistently lost competitions to mediocre free skaters such as Schuba.
In spite of her early reputation in the sport as a precocious and athletic jumper, today Janet Lynn is best remembered for the gracefulness and easy movement of her skating, for her use of the full body to express her music, for the integration of the jumps with the choreography, and for the spiritual approach she brought to her performances.

LU CHEN
(Simplified Chinese: 陈露, pinyin: Chén Lù) (born 24 November 1976 in Changchun, China) is a Chinese figure skater. Her mother was a table tennis player and her father was a hockey coach. She was coached by Li Minzhu. She is China's most successful woman figure skater. She is called "Butterfly on Ice" by the fans and media in China for her popular performance to Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto.

TENLEY ALBRIGHT
(born July 18, 1935)She became the first American female skater to win a figure skating Olympic gold medal, at the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. She also won the U.S. Championships 5 times, between 1952 and 1956; was World Champion in 1953 and 1955; and had been the silver medalist at the 1952 Winter Olympics.
Albright retired from competitive skating after the 1956 season. Unlike most elite-level skaters, she never skated professionally. She had entered Radcliffe College in 1953 as a pre-med student, and after her Olympic triumph she focused on completing her education. Albright graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1961, and went on to become a surgeon. Her interest in medicine was spurred by being hospitalized for an attack of polio as a child.

OKSANA BAIUL
Born: Nov. 16, 1977Ukrainian figure skater
1993 world champion at age 15; edged Nancy Kerrigan by a 5-4 judges' vote for 1994 Olympic gold medal.

TONYA HARDING
(born November 12, 1970)
She is a former figure skater from Portland, Oregon. Despite a tough childhood in an unstable lower-class family, as well as being plagued by asthma, she became an elite figure skater. She won the U.S. Figure Skating Championships twice and place second in the 1991 World Championships. She was the second woman, and the first American woman, to complete a triple axel jump in competition.
She became notorious for allegedly conspiring to harm competitor Nancy Kerrigan in an attack, which took place on January 6, 1994 at a practice session during the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Harding's ex-husband Jeff Gillooly had hired Shane Stant to strike Kerrigan on the knee. Harding went on to win that event, while Kerrigan's injury forced her to withdraw. After Harding admitted that she had helped to cover up the attack, both the United States Figure Skating Association and United States Olympic Committee initiated proceedings to remove her from the 1994 Olympic team, but Harding retained her place after threatening legal action. She finished eighth while Kerrigan, recovered from her injuries, finished second.

NANCY KERRIGAN
(born 13 October 1969 in Woburn, Massachusetts) is a two-time Olympic figure skating medalist.
She first came to prominence when the United States team scored a medal sweep in the ladies' event in the 1991 World Figure Skating Championships; Kerrigan received the bronze medal behind Kristi Yamaguchi and Tonya Harding. Her career seemed headed steadily upward as she received a bronze medal in the 1992 Winter Olympics, and the silver medal at the 1992 World Championships. The following season she became United States Champion and was leading the World Championship in Prague after the short program when a disastrous long program resulted in her tumbling to fifth in the standings and a surprising win by Oksana Baiul.
She captured national attention beyond the skating world on January 6, 1994, when she was clubbed in the knee by Shane Stant, who was hired to do harm to her by Tonya Harding's ex-husband Jeff Gillooly and friend Shawn Eckardt. Despite the unprovoked nature of the attack, as a public figure she was mocked in the press for crying "Why me? Why now?" in what was perceived as a whine. Kerrigan was misquoted; her words in the immediate aftermath of the attack were simply "Why? Why?".
Just a month after the attack, Kerrigan went on to win the silver medal in the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer (second to Oksana Baiul), with what was undoubtedly the best performance of her career. The decision between Kerrigan and Baiul was close and somewhat controversial, and remains so to this day. After hearing Kerrigan had complained the judges hadn't noticed how flawless her performance was and that they'd missed Baiul's mistakes, [1] CBS television, which had the U.S. broadcast rights to the event, continued to sensationalize the story by broadcasting video of a frustrated Kerrigan saying "I don't know why they're bothering reapplying her makeup. She's only going to start crying again." [2] after she was mistakenly told the medal presentation was being delayed to allow Baiul to fix her makeup. (The delay was because no one knew the Ukrainian national anthem.)
Without a fairy-tale ending, the media and public opinion turned on Kerrigan. She was criticized for leaving the Olympic venue before the closing ceremonies to take part in a pre-arranged publicity parade at Walt Disney World, her $2 million dollar sponsor, and then for being caught on microphone during the parade saying "This is dumb. I hate it. This is the most corniest thing I have ever done." [3] She said her remarks were taken out of context: she was not commenting on being in the parade, but on the fact she didn't want to wear her silver medal in the parade.
The tabloids also started to publish stories that she was seeing her agent/future husband, Jerry Solomon, while he was still married to his first wife. Solomon had been long separated from his first wife and they were headed to a divorce.
Kerrigan's guest appearance on Saturday Night Live was not well received either. She was nervous throughout the live performance and her acting seemed wooden. Even in the promos for the show she looked uncomfortable.
In a Dateline NBC interview, she responded to all of the attacks made on her, and broke down because of the pressure that took its toll on her everyday life. It was clear she was having a hard time living up to the image of being America's newest skating sweetheart, a title which was given to her by fate. For her part, Kerrigan undoubtedly made mistakes in handling her public image. But after a few months, the press moved on and she was able to live a normal life again.
Kerrigan retired from active competition after the Olympics, and is now married with two sons, Matthew and Brian. She has appeared in a variety of ice skating shows since turning professional. She also created The Nancy Kerrigan Foundation to raise awareness and support for the vision impaired.

SURYA BONALY

(born December 15, 1973)she is a French professional figure skater, born in Nice, France. She began skating when she was 18 months old. As a child, her skating heroes were Midori Ito and Brian Boitano. Bonaly won the European Figure Skating Championships five times in a row (1991 - 1995), but never managed to win first place in the World Championshops, or the Winter Olympics. She stands 5 feet tall and resides in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. She became an American citizen in November 2003.
Bonaly, once a world champion gymnast, is famous for both her back flip landed on one blade (she is the only skater in the world capable of this) and her defiant, saucy attitude. This attitude was shown at the 1994 World Figure Skating Championships in Chiba, Japan. With Nancy Kerrigan and Oksana Baiul out, it was an open field for the championship. Bonaly skated a clean performance, but according to the judges, home country favorite Yuka Sato skated a better one. Surya thought she was robbed. She showed defiance when she just stood aside of the medals platform rather than standing on it. Bonaly was coaxed into standing on it, but took her medal off after being presented with it. The crowd immediately booed her. After the presentation, a crying Surya was greeted by reporters.
During the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, having lost any medal chance due to a missed triple Salchow jump, she decided to end her amateur career with a symbolic gesture. She performed her back flip, which is an illegal move, in front of the judges. They penalized her, and she finished 11th in the Olympic competition.
She is currently touring with Champions on Ice.

SONJA HENIE

(April 8, 1912-October 12, 1969)

she was a Norwegian figure skater and actress.

MICHELLE KWAN

born July 7, 1980)

She is a Chinese American figure skater who has won 9 U.S. championships, making her one of the most decorated figure skaters in U.S. history.

KRISTI YAMAGUCHI
Born: July 12, 1971Figure Skater
Finished second in the 1991 American nationals but won the world title that year; dominated the sport in 1992 by winning the national, world and Olympic titles and then turned professional.