Before the Blade Angels: 1956 Cortina Olympic gold medalist Tenley Albright remembers win 70 years later
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When Tenley Albright won Olympic gold for the United States, the event was still held outdoors. Spectators huddled around the rink and in stands that flanked the sides of the sheet of ice for what would be the last time before Olympic speed skating and figure skating moved indoors. Albright recalls the ice having a crystalized layer crunching under her blades from resurfacing the night before, and vividly remembers taking off for a double Axel in the sunlight and landing in the shade.
It’s been 70 years and a couple of weeks since those 1956 Games, and in a full-circle moment, the Olympics are returning to Cortina — as well as Milan and several northern Italian locations.
Albright, who turned 90 last summer, has witnessed a vast change in the sport she loves. “Back then, I literally could not have imagined what we saw this week,” the six-time U.S. national champion said after watching the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in January. “It’s just so heartwarming.”
With athletes like Ilia Malinin and his quadruple Axel, and several women such as Amber Glenn and Japan’s Ami Nakai completing triple Axels, the raw athleticism of the sport has remade its image since Albright last competed.
“Training was quite different then,” she said, noting how today coaching techniques are so much more detailed, using technology, and expert knowledge of biomechanics. “I remember the coaches would say, ‘Well, that was pretty good. Now do that again and go higher.’”
Albright (second from right) skates on the outdoor 1956 Cortina ice rink with the U.S. team.
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Growing up, Albright wasn’t an obvious shoo-in for future Olympic champion. Her local ice rink was often closed due to gas rationing during World War II, but she recalls loving it from her first try. At 11, she contracted a serious case of polio, and after a slow recovery, doctors recommended that she try to regain strength doing something she had enjoyed before her illness.
“I had the experience of not being able to use my muscles at a time when there wasn’t any treatment and they weren’t even clear about how it was spread,” Albright recalled. While lying in bed, she visualized walking and skating, and willed those things into reality.
Once back on the ice, she began to take the sport more seriously and, while balancing school with training, started to participate in local and regional competitions. Skating early in the mornings, with mice rustling in the stands of the Boston Skating Club rink and hotdogs strewn across the ice from the hockey game the night before, her skills began to grow.
“That’s the wonderful thing about skating: It’s like a ladder, you learn one simple thing — a bunny hop or a waltz jump — and then you’re allowed to learn the next thing. And that goes on and on,” Albright said.
Tenley Albright is judged on the “figures” portion of her event. Figures were last competed in an Olympic Games in 1988.
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Her favorite part of the sport was “free skating” — the jumps and spins portion of her discipline. She loved choreographing routines, making up new moves, many of which are competed today. “I had started to try going very fast backwards, and then [sliding] into a split and sliding up again. And I’m thrilled to see it in the competition now, 70 years later,” she said.
Her least favorite part of figure skating was the “figures” portion of the event. No longer competed, but memorialized in the name of the sport, figures are mandala-like shapes formed on the ice’s surface by driving the edge of a blade in varying circular shapes. Judges would assign points based on accuracy and complexity, and Albright said that while training figures was monotonous at times, there was a deeply meditative quality to carrying them out.
