Frozen in Time. Nikki Nichols
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her dream, she had fallen short too, and Laurence was the cause.
Before the 1961 Nationals, Steffi and Laurence had met in competition only one other time, and that was in 1960. Since Steffi lived in Colorado Springs and Laurence in Boston, they were never in the same competitive region—meaning they wouldn’t have met in the sectional and regional competitions that qualified skaters to Nationals. Steffi and Laurence both advanced from their sectional meets to qualify for the 1960 U.S. Nationals. The top two American women seemed obvious—Carol Heiss and Barbara Roles. Carol was the reigning world champion, and Barbara had placed fifth in the world in 1959. With Heiss and Roles sure to win gold and silver, the bronze medal was the most coveted piece of hardware available to the lesser-known skaters.
Winning bronze put the world on notice about America’s future in the sport. It would also earn the winner a trip to the 1960 Squaw Valley Olympics. Laurence and Steffi emerged as bronze medal front-runners. One of them would inevitably go home in a placement worse than dead last—fourth. In today’s glamorous world of figure skating, even a fourth-place finisher in a deep field of talent can be asked to tour and even can become quite wealthy as a skater. These rare moneymaking opportunities were forbidden to skaters in 1960. Fourth place most assuredly equaled anonymity.
Laurence’s mother drew attention to the strictness of the amateur rules in one of her three instructional skating books. In The Fun of Figure Skating, published in 1960, she is careful to mention in the opening pages that the skaters used to demonstrate technique in photos and illustrations “received no remuneration either directly or indirectly.” In 1960, amateur guidelines had to be strictly followed, or athletes would face expulsion from the sport. There were no big-salary touring contracts, no television specials, no endorsement deals of any kind. The sport could not bring a penny of profit to the athlete, or else amateur status was revoked. One of the American ice dance competitors, Larry Pierce, had been forced to give up his job at the Coliseum ice skating rink in Indianapolis, because even his job resurfacing the ice constituted a violation of the rules.
Figure skaters were also expected to attend school full time. They did not have the tutors or home-schooling opportunities many sports stars have today. If they hoped to attend a good university, they had to be standout students. There were no figure skating programs at universities, so there were no scholarships connected to the sport.
In addition to the lack of compensation or rewards, there was a much slimmer chance of actually succeeding in a sport such as figure skating. Skating at the Olympics was and is all about the individual or pair. There is really no concept of “team,” the way there is in soccer or basketball, in which a dozen players make up an Olympic or World delegation. Even Maribel Vinson Owen acknowledged the sacrifice and its frequent failure to bear fruit. “You could spend a decade on skating and only end up with heartbreak,” she once told a student.
So why endure the sacrifices, the hardships, the long training hours, and the time away from family and friends? It’s the athlete’s creed to believe that one day the efforts will pay off. There is no room for self-doubt. There is no room to believe that fourth place is the best result possible. At the 1960 U.S. National Championships, only three young ladies could stand on the podium. Only three could go to the Olympics. If Heiss and Roles performed as expected, even if Laurence or Steffi did well, one would have to go home.
In the ladies’ and men’s competitions, the judges awarded points in two segments: the compulsory figures—the esoteric pattern work carved into the ice—and the long program, also known as the free skate. In the latter segment, skaters chose their own music, as they do today, and performed the most visually appealing part of skating—the jumping, spinning, and choreography—in programs that last more than four exhausting minutes.
Compulsory figures, from which the name “figure skating” derives, were worth two-thirds of the overall score. Each move was based on the famous “figure eight” maneuver, in which an actual number “8” could be seen traced into the ice. Also called “school figures,” there were many variations on this shape, some of which resembled snowflakes and stars. Each variation required a mastery of “edging.” Each skate blade contains two edges—the inside and outside edge. Edges produce speed, power, and traction. A trained figure skater can look at the ice after a move and determine which edge touched the ice. Beginners often ride on the “flats” of the blades—that part of the steel between edges that keeps the speed slow and carves thick lines into the ice.
Figures demand control. They take a precise, steady blade, perfect placement of body weight, strong ankles and torso muscles, and correct timing to trace just the right marks into the ice. The figures consist of two or three circular lobes with different variations in position and edge of the blade. Some of the more complex figures required tracing a pattern, then retracing over it with the other foot. Judges looked for perfect, wobble-free circles, all with the same shape and diameter. The judges hovered nearby as skaters completed this portion of the competition, then they inspected the marks up close.
By the time the 1960 Nationals had arrived, Steffi was known as one of the best practitioners of figures in the country. Being as modest as she was, she nearly competed at the junior level in 1960 but decided instead that she should challenge herself and skate on the senior level. If she could perform her figures perfectly, a medal would be within reach. In fact, if her figures went well, she could create a sizeable enough lead over other bronze medal contenders to secure her Olympic berth before the free skate even began.
This lopsided kind of judging frustrated many fans, and ultimately led to the abandonment of school figures. American skater Janet Lynn, a superb artist on the ice who seemed to practically float along the surface, never won a World Championship or Olympic gold medal—largely because she was not strong in school figures. At the 1972 World Championships, Austrian Beatrix Schuba had built such an enormous lead after the school figures that she won the gold despite placing ninth in the free skate. Lynn finished third after a breathtaking free skate performance.
Television helped lead to the demise of school figures. Because only the more visually exciting free skate was shown on television, audiences at home were confused and appalled by the outcome of the 1972 Worlds. The complaints were so abundant that the International Skating Union created what we now know as the short program to lessen the overall importance of figures in the final placements. The death knell for figures rang in 1990, when they were removed from international competition altogether. In their place, skaters are now required to perform what are known as “moves in the field,” a mixture of dance steps, turns, edgework, and stroking. These moves are designed to show a command of both blade and body. They are not part of national or international competitions, but skaters do have to take proficiency tests in these moves in order to “graduate” to different levels of competition.
Laurence was similar to Janet Lynn in that she was known to be better in the free skate than in school figures. At the 1960 Nationals, Laurence performed admirably in the school figures, allowing Steffi to take only a slight lead for the bronze. The free skate would settle the matter. As predicted, Carol Heiss and Barbara Roles won the gold and silver, respectively, and when the bronze medal was decided, Laurence bested Stephanie by only one sixteenth of a point.
Laurence was jubilant. Steffi was crushed. It would have been much easier to take had she finished near the bottom of the field. Finishing fourth, however, was truly painful; being first alternate was proof that Steffi did belong in the senior level, but they may as well have named it the “oh-so-close-but-you’re-not-going-to-the-Olympics” award.
The Owen family celebrated not one, but two Olympics berths. In a fortuitous, but not entirely surprising, turn of events, Mara and Dudley had claimed the silver medal in the pairs event. Laurence’s mother, as their coach, viewed this moment as an affirmation of her own coaching abilities. Her pride in her daughters’ accomplishments was beyond measure.
It didn’t seem possible to make Steffi a harder worker, but her fourth-place finish had just that effect. Her disappointment simmered for a year. She had something to prove at Nationals. She entered the Ice Palace in January of 1961 and began her customary routine of stretching in the hallways and performing off-ice jumps, sometimes getting so lost in her practice maneuvers that she didn’t notice the people coming