Peggy Fleming

1948-

American figure skater

One of the most influential female athletes of the past century, Peggy Fleming combined grace and power to create some of the most memorable figure-skating programs of her era. After winning a surprising victory at the 1964 United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA) National Championship as a fifteen-year-old, Fleming went on to capture four more consecutive national titles. She also added three International Skating Union (ISU) World Championship titles from 1965 to 1968 to her list of accomplishments. At the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France, Fleming became the only American athlete to win a gold medal at the games. Retiring from the amateur ranks after winning her third World Championship later that year, Fleming went on to star in a number of figure skating television specials and appeared with various touring ice shows in the 1970s. Her work as a skating analyst for the ABC network kept her in the public eye in the 1980s and 1990s. After a diagnosis of breast cancer in 1998, Fleming also campaigned to raise awareness of the importance of early detection and treatment for the disease. Married to dermatologist Greg Jenkins since 1970 and the mother two sons, Fleming remains one of the most admired figures in the world of sports.

Showed Early Promise

Peggy Gale Jenkins was born on July 27, 1948 in San Jose, California. She was the second of Albert and Doris (Deal) Fleming's four daughters. For the first several years of her life the Flemings lived in the San Jose area, where Al Fleming had a job as a newspaper press operator for the San Jose Mercury News. Fleming started skating at age nine and found it to be a good outlet for her naturally competitive spirit. Just a year after starting skating lessons, Fleming took home the gold medal in the Bay Area Juvenile Championship.

In 1960 the Flemings moved to Pasadena in southern California. Fleming's figure skating activities increasingly became the center of her family's life. Her father got up early to resurface the ice at a local rink so that his daughter could have extra practice time in the morning, and her mother sewed her costumes, found suitable coaches, and cleared away any distractions that might take her daughter's focus away from her skating. As Fleming recalled in her 1999 autobiography, The Long Program: Skating Toward Life's Victories, "I wouldn't have started skating if it weren't for my Dad, but I became a skater because of my mom. It is not stretching the point to say, 'We became a skater,' two people, one pair of skates. We each had a job to do to make me a champion skater, and I certainly didn't do it on my own."

With her family's support, Fleming rose quickly through the USFSA's ranks. She won the gold medal in the Pacific Coast Juvenile Championship in 1960, followed by another gold in the Pacific Coast Novice Championship in 1961. In 1962 she continued her winning streak with a gold at the Pacific Coast Championship and added a silver medal in the National Novice Championship. A bronze medal at the 1963 National Junior Championship earned Fleming a berth at the following year's National Championship as a senior-level skater. Astounding everyone at the event, Fleming won the title, which meant that she also qualified to go to the 1964 Winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria. Fleming placed sixth at the Games and then attended her first ISU World Championship, where she placed seventh.

Chronology

Thrown into Spotlight

Under her mother's watchful eye, Fleming had made a spectacular rise in the figure-skating world and was ranked as the best American skater by the time she was fifteen years old. Part of her rapid rise in the sport was due to the 1961 airplane crash in Brussels, Belgium, that had claimed the lives of almost the entire U.S. figure skating delegation, which was on its way to that year's World Championship. With America's best skaters suddenly gone, the USFSA looked to younger skaters, such as Fleming, to build up a program that was previously the best in the world. Americans Tenley Albright and Carol Heiss Jenkins had claimed the Olympic Gold Medals in women's figure skating in 1956 and 1960, and now Fleming was the leading contender to bring home another gold medal in 1968.

In order to help her daughter live up to her initial promise, Doris Fleming often made coaching changes; one such change, after her daughter's victory at the 1965 National Championship and third-place showing at that year's World Championship, took the Flemings to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where coach Carlo Fassi was teaching. The change was a crucial one in Fleming's career, as Fassi worked with her intensively on practicing her compulsory (or school) figures, which were a major portion in the scoring of USFSA and ISU events. Fassi's demand that Fleming treat every practice session as an actual competition paid off. She repeated as National Champion in 1966 and then took the gold medal at the World Championship in Davos, Switzerland later that year. In addition to helping her skating career, the move to Colorado Springs was also significant in Fleming's personal life as it occurred shortly after her father died of a heart attack in 1966. It was during this time that she also met Greg Jenkins, a former pairs skater who would eventually attend medical school and become a dermatologist. The two started dating in 1966 and were married four years later, on June 13, 1970.

Although she continued to work with coach Bob Paul on her choreography, Fassi's technical input and insights helped Fleming to become almost unbeatable after 1966. Often described as having nerves of steel in competition, Fleming credited her mother for helping her get ready for events by taking the pressure off of her daughter. Doris Fleming indeed earned a reputation as a formidable force on the skating circuit and went out of her way to help her daughter keep her focus on skating. On the ice, Fleming developed into a skater who combined athleticism with grace and power. Her style contrasted significantly with many European skaters, who often demonstrated significant technical ability but only rudimentary choreography. The best example of Fleming's unique style was shown in her spread eagle move into a double axel jump followed by another spread eagle. Although the combination was extremely difficult to execute, it created a breathtaking and impressive moment on the ice.

Awards and Accomplishments

The Long Program: Skating Toward Life's Victories

I was proud to be on the [1964 Winter Olympic] team, but I hated the Olympic uniforms. Even then, fashion was becoming an important part ofthe total package. How you looked said a lot about your style, and yourstyle was what made your skating different and special. Those tight skipants and geeky wool jackets with red and blue stripes on the collar werenot my style. Still, when all the American team walked into the arena with allthe thousands of other athletes, all of us in our uniforms and all of usmarching behind our flags—it was breathtaking: a hundred thousand peo-ple roaring and applauding, under the snow-capped Alps and the bluestblue sky in the world. Everybody should have a first Olympics—it movesyou, takes over your emotions and overwhelms you until you can hardlythink. And everyone should be fortunate enough to go on to have a secondOlympics, so that you have time to take it all in.

Source: Peggy Fleming, with Peter Kaminsky, The Long Program: Skating Toward Life's Victories, New York: Pocket Books, 1999, p. 40.

Olympic Champion

Having won consecutive World Championships in 1966 and 1967 and U.S. National Championships from 1964 to 1967, Fleming entered the 1968 season as the favorite for the Olympic gold medal. Her competitive season got off to a remarkable start at the 1968 U.S. Nationals in Philadelphia, where Fleming's free skate ranked among the best-ever performances in women's figure skating up to that time. At the 1968 Winter Olympic Games in Grenoble, France, Fleming once again led the field after the first two segments of the competition going into the final free skate. Although she had trouble with some of her jumps and the performance was not her best, Fleming skated well enough to win the event. She was the only gold medal winner among the American athletes at the Games, a feat that made her accomplishment even more notable back home. Two weeks later Fleming delivered a much better performance of her free skate at the 1968 World Championships in Geneva, Switzerland, and announced her retirement from amateur ranks.

On Television as Performer and Broadcaster

Most Olympic champion figure skaters had previously encountered few career opportunities beyond skating in ice show reviews such as the Ice Capades. Fleming changed that pattern by forging into the realm of network television, beginning with her 1968 special on NBC, Here's Peggy Fleming, which included a guest appearance by Gene Kelley. It was the first of five successful specials that Fleming made for NBC. The series included a 1973 show filmed in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), U.S.S.R., which made it the first American-Soviet joint television production. Fleming also made selected appearances with the touring companies of the Ice Follies and Holiday on Ice programs throughout the 1970s. In 1973 she appeared in her own review, "Peggy's Dinner Theater on Ice," in Lake Tahoe, California; it later toured the country as "Peggy Fleming's Concert on Ice." On January 30, 1977, Fleming gave birth to her first son, Andy. Her second son, Todd, arrived in September 1988.

In 1980 Fleming began appearing as a skating analyst on the ABC network, often teamed with two-time Olympic gold medalist Dick Button . Although the two had different approaches—Fleming's gentle critiques contrasted greatly with Button's sharp on-air personality—the appreciation they both had for skating was obvious. More than twenty years later, both still appear together in ABC's telecasts of national and international skating events. In 1997, while covering the World Championships in Lausanne, Switzerland, Fleming was saddened by the death of her former coach, Carlo Fassi, who was attending the event to supervise his student, American skater Nicole Bobek.

Raised Breast Cancer Awareness

At the U.S. Nationals in Philadelphia in January 1998, Fleming discovered a lump in her left breast. Although she continued to work through the next few weeks, a biopsy showed that the lump was malignant. Undergoing surgery to remove the cancer on February 10—exactly thirty years after she had won her gold medal in Grenoble—Fleming later underwent radiation therapy and made a speedy recovery.

Inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1974, Fleming was also honored with an induction into the USFSA Hall of Fame and World Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 1976. In 1981 she was inducted into the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame and in 1997 was the recipient of the U.S. Olympic Committee's Olympic Spirit Award. Each of these honors has highlighted Fleming's contribution to figure skating and to athletic endeavors in general. In combining sheer athletic power with aesthetic grace, Fleming was one of the first figure skaters to be able to integrate impressive jump sequences with choreographed ballet. As a National, World, and Olympic champion, she also has helped to popularize the sport of figure skating and expand the range of professional opportunities available to skaters after they had left the amateur ranks. More than thirty years after her last competition, Fleming remains a popular and admired personality, not only in the sports world but for her contributions to publicizing women's health issues as well.

Where Is She Now?

The mother of two sons, Andy and Todd, Fleming makes her home inthe San Jose suburb of Los Gatos with her husband, Dr. Greg Jenkins. Inearly 1998, after noticing a lump in her left breast, Fleming confronted a di-agnosis of breast cancer that required surgery. The procedure was per-formed in February 1998; after undergoing radiation therapy, Fleming madea full recovery. "I have no explanation for it," Fleming told Karen S. Schnei-der of People about her speedy return to health. "Something must be liningup right. Whatever the case, I am very grateful." Fleming subsequentlymade numerous personal appearances to heighten awareness of breastcancer, particularly the importance of frequent self-examinations andprompt medical treatment.

After more than twenty years as a skating analyst for the ABC net-work, Fleming also remains a fixture on television. In addition to her dutiesas a broadcaster, Fleming appears frequently in advertisements for Os-Cal, a calcium dietary supplement. The recipient of numerous awards during hercareer, Fleming was honored in 1997 by the U.S. Olympic Committee withits Olympic Spirit Award.

SELECTED WRITINGS BY FLEMING:

(With Peter Kaminsky) The Long Program: Skating Toward Life's Victories. New York: Pocket Books, 1999.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Books

Brennan, Christine. Edge of Glory: The Inside Story of the Quest for Figure Skating's Olympic Gold Medals. New York: Scribner, 1998.

Brennan, Christine. Inside Edge: A Revealing Journey into the Secret World of Figure Skating. New York: Scribner, 1996.

Fleming, Peggy with Peter Kaminsky. The Long Program: Skating Toward Life's Victories. New York: Pocket Books, 1999.

Smith, Beverley. Talking Figure Skating: Behind the Scenes in the World's Most Glamorous Sport. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1997.

U.S. Figure Skating Association. The Official Book of Figure Skating. New York: Simon & Schuster Editions, 1998.

Periodicals

Ottum, Bob. "The Perils of Peggy and a Great Silver Raid." Sports Illustrated (February 19, 1968): 18, 21.

Schneider, Karen S. "Gold Mettle: A Month after Being Diagnosed with Breast Cancer, Olympic Skating

Champion Peggy Fleming Is on Her Way to Recovery." People (March 2, 1998): 88.

Sketch by Timothy Borden