Ina Bauers On The Imjin: Skating And The Korean War

Australian soldiers skating on the Imjin River

Much is said about how both World War I and II affected the skating world, but in the United States in particular, the impact of The Korean War on figure skating is something that has been long overlooked. As a result of the Selective Service Act Of 1948, men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six were required to sign up for a military draft, which meant that they could be required to serve for twenty-one months of active duty and five years of reserve duty with the U.S. military, whether they wanted to or not. Between the outbreak of The Korean War in 1950 and the Korean Armistice Agreement on July 27, 1953, one and a half million Americans were conscripted and over a million others volunteered to serve in the military effort. The impact on the American figure skating community was significant.

Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine

The figure skating disciplines affected most by the draft and Korean War were without a doubt pairs and ice dance. Many partnerships were dissolved or tested. Vera Ruth Elliott and Rex Cook, 1949 Silver (junior) ice dance champions and the number five Gold (senior) dance team, were forced to part ways in the autumn of 1950 when Rex left his job as a television technician, enlisted and relocated from Long Island, New York to Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. 

Vera Ruth Elliott and Rex Cook

Anne Davies and Carleton Hoffner, medallists in both pairs and ice dance at the U.S. and North American Championships, also ended their partnership when the pressures of trying to balance training and Hoffner's military duties became too much. 1951 U.S. Silver (junior) Dance Champion Jack B. Jost split with partner Caryl Johns and served overseas, where he won the Japanese men's title and performed in shows in Osaka. Both Caryl Johns and Vera Ruth Elliott went on to coaching careers as a result of losing their partners to military service.

Michael McGean

Lois Waring's partner Michael McGean lucked out when he was stationed overseas in Germany instead of Korea. The duo managed to practice sporadically and incredibly won the International Ice Dancing Competition at the 1950 World Championships in London, despite missed training time. Danny Ryan, who placed second the following year with Carol Ann Peters at the 'unofficial' ice dance competition held in conjunction with the 1951 World Championships in Milan, was drafted afterward. After completing basic training at Fort Knox in Kentucky, his military service was rearranged so that he could continue skating with Peters while he was stationed at Camp Drum in Watertown, New York. Four times a week, Ryan drove from the base to St. Lawrence's Appleton Arena to train. Patricia Shelley Bushman's wonderful book "Indelible Tracings" noted, "They also made periodic visits to Lake Placid; Danny, who had a pilot's license, sometimes flew them there in a small, four-passenger plane on skis. When Danny and Carol participated in skating exhibitions, carnivals or competitions, he wore his U.S. Army uniform." Ryan was never sent to Korea but sadly, he was among those who later perished in the 1961 Sabena Crash.

Don Laws. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.

1950 U.S. Junior Champion Don Laws put his skating career on hold and served in Korea in 1952. In his book "Don Laws: The Life of an Olympic Figure Skating Coach", he recalled, "Korea had many effects on me, and I'm sure I grew up in many ways while I was there. But one thing it did not change was my desire to be involved in skating. While in the Army, I had the opportunity to look at the world of skating from the outside in. I knew then that it most likely would always be a part of my life." A Captain at Fort Devens (who just happened to be Maribel Vinson Owen's neighbour) helped arrange for Laws to bring his skates to Korea with him. In his military uniform, he practiced spins on a small section of a frozen Korean river.

Private Reginald Steel

Don Laws wasn't the only soldier to take advantage of subzero temperatures and take to the ice during The Korean War. Skating was a popular pastime for off-duty Australian soldiers stationed in Korea, who laced up and carved out edges on the frozen Imjin River and the Han River, near Paju in the Gyeonggi Province. Private Reginald Steel, who emigrated from England to Australia in 1946, relished in the opportunity, as he had regularly skated three miles to school every morning as a boy over the frozen fens in Norfolk. Australian speed skater and hockey player Private Trevor Harold Clark kept his skating up on the Imjin every chance he could get. Canadian soldiers even played impromptu games of hockey on a section of the Imjin, only miles from the front lines, that they dubbed 'Imjin Gardens' in 1952.

Private Trevor Harold Clark

Though The Korean War may have ended or strained many partnerships and forced many to postpone or change the direction of their skating careers, there's something remarkable about the fact that even in the face of an uncertain fate, people still found a way to skate.

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.

Nikkō's Kanaya Hotel And The Rokko Skating Club

Skating history and hotels seem to go hand in hand. Over the years on the blog, we have touched on several hotel shows in the United States, checked into Tokyo's Sanno Hotel and even looked at a haunted hotel in Colorado Springs with a skating connection. Well, we're not done yet, skating history lovers! 

Helen Keller in Japan, 1937

The story of how the Kanaya Hotel in Nikkō', Japan came to be is most certainly a unique one. The Old Tokyo blog tells us, "The hotel began as an inn when the owner, Kanaya Zenichiro, employed as a traditional musician at Toshogu Shrine, offered rooms to foreign travelers who brought with them special letters of introduction. One day in 1871, Kanaya gave Dr. J.C. Hepburn, an American missionary and famous doctor in Yokohama, a night's lodging. Dr. Hepburn then recommended to Kanaya that he open an inn at his house. It was the birth of Kanaya Cottage Inn (also called 'Kanaya Samurai House'). In 1893, Kanaya built a new building in place of the original inn. Among the Kanaya Hotel's most illustrious guests have been British diplomat Ernest Satow, a frequent guest; American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who stayed briefly in 1905; Albert Einstein stayed overnight in 1922; and Helen Keller in 1937."

Bottom photo courtesy "Skating" magazine

Skating has long been a popular pastime for hotel guests. In the fifties, the hotel started freezing its outdoor swimming pool in the winter months and converting it into a skating rink. A second artificial pond, called Lake Placid, had been a popular skating spot since the nineteenth century. "Fodor's Japan And East Asia" guide tells us the first rink at the Kanaya was open both day and night and often packed with both travelers and locals wearing Japanese Geta ice skates which were, according to Kokusai Kankōkyoku, "made from a piece of curved bamboo fastened to the foot by straw thongs".

"Japan Magazine" tells us that as early as 1924 a group of "gentleman and students from Kobe and Osaka" formed the Rokko Skating Club and members came to the Kanaya quite regularly to practice. The caption to a photograph sent to Theresa Weld Blanchard that appeared in "Skating" magazine in 1933 showed a young man performing a sit spin at the club.

By the mid-thirties, when a team of five pioneering Japanese skaters made their debut at the Winter Olympic Games in Germany, Tokyo alone had three indoor rinks. One was in the basement of the Sanno Hotel in Akasaka, another was located at the Isetan Department Store near Sinzyuku Station and the third, a large ice hall run by the Tokyo Shibaura Electric Co., was in Shiba. 

Though Japanese skaters are certainly no longer confined to frozen ponds and manmade rinks on frozen baseball fields, you can still retrace the steps and spirals of Japan's earliest skaters today. The Kanaya Hotel is still open, and only a short distance away is the Nikkō Kirifuri Ice Arena. 

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of "Jackson Haines: The Skating King" and pre-ordering "Sequins, Scandals & Salchows: Figure Skating in the 1980s", which will be released this fall where books are sold: https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.

The Skating Queen Of Vienna: The Herma Szabo Story

"Rather short, but immensely powerful, I shall never forget her performance in the blizzard at Chamonix in the ladies' Olympic event; she went into the full force of the wind like an express train, nothing could stop her. She is one of the greatest skaters that has ever lived." - T.D. Richardson, "Skating", 1956

Born February 22, 1902, in Vienna, Austria, Herma Szabo was surrounded by skating from the day she was born. Her father Alexander was an affluent import-export businessman and her mother Christa von Szabo was an accomplished figure skater who won two medals in pairs skating at the World Championships and performed before Czar Nicholas II before The Great War.

Herma started skating at the age of two with her mother on the outdoor artificial ice rink of her uncle Eduard Engelmann along with her cousins Helene and Christine, and started pursuing figure skating seriously at the age of nine. 

Showing athletic talent from a young age, Herma spent her winters training on the ice and summers wading around in a swimming pool and playing tennis and field hockey. In 1915, she placed third in a swimming competition in the town of Perchtoldsdorf. Throughout The Great War, she found success competing in the junior ranks in sporadic competitions against the best young skaters from Vienna and Berlin. A scrappy young thing, she was caught in the corner of the ice at the Wiener Eislaufverein in a full-on brawl with two boys.

Herma Szabo and Karl Kronfuss

Left: skating junior pairs with Karl Kronfuss. Right: competing at the 1918 Austrian Championships in Vienna.

When The Great War ended and international competitions in figure skating resumed, Herma rose to prominence as the 'it girl' of skating in Vienna. She was one of Pepi Weiß-Pfändler's prize pupils and as such, received a great deal of attention at the Wiener Eislaufverein. In the twenties, she won every Austrian Championships she entered in both singles and pairs skating. Her success didn't come without criticism. She faced judgment for wearing skirts cut above the knee and American skater Nathaniel Niles once claimed that "her form is possibly a little too masculine".

When Herma made her debut at the World Championships in Stockholm, Sweden in 1922, she was the unanimous choice of all five Scandinavian judges, beating skaters from Sweden and Norway on their own turf at an event that was part of the Nordic Games. She repeated as World Champion in 1923 in Vienna.

At the age of twenty-one at the 1924 Winter Olympic Games in Chamonix, Herma dominated both the school figures and free skating and defeated American Beatrix Loughran by over twenty points. The Official Report of The Games reported that her free skating performance "was clearly the best of the lot, featuring the spread eagle and spins standing and sitting... [Her] victory was fully deserved, because this skater showed her rivals indisputable superiority." Despite her impressive performance, she actually believed she had lost to Loughran and her father had to go retrieve her from her hotel when the Austrian anthem was being played. Herma's win in the women's event and her cousin Helene's win in pairs with Alfred Berger was the first and only time in Olympic history that members of the same family won gold medals in different figure skating disciplines at the same Olympic Games. Years later Herma recalled, "I always had a new dress for major competitions, and I wore a terra-cotta coloured wool that day. The music was provided by six musicians, five strings and a piano. It was broadcast over 10 electric megaphones around the grandstand. On the day of the ladies' free skating competition, however, there was a strong wind blowing the music away from the rink. We managed all right." She was fascinated by the North American and British skaters who competed. "They seemed so much prettier, and they skated so differently, so modern," she later reminisced.

After winning her third World title in Oslo in 1924, Herma followed in her mother's footsteps and competed in both women's singles and pairs skating concurrently. Incredibly, at the 1925 World Championships in Davos, she took the gold medal in both singles and pairs with partner Ludwig Wrede, defeating France's Andrée and Pierre Brunet by only half a point in the latter.

At the height of her success, Herma's attitude towards skating - and the fame that came with it - was extremely down-to-earth, humble and refreshing. In an interview with "Skating" magazine, "One must have a competitive nature to withstand all the difficulties of figure skating training, and in spite of everything to find joy in one's art. The finest moments of all the hard work are those when total strangers come up to me before a competition with their advice and help. It is equally moving when the dear little children bring me oranges for my journeys, so that I need a basket finally, to carry them all. A youthful mother assures me that her son is ruining himself for me. The son is eight years old and spends all his pocket money for sweets, which he presents to me with great embarrassment. When I feel how anxious my colleagues are to help and sympathize with me, how their thoughts follow me on my long journeys, and that they await results with such hectic interest, how the telephone rings by day and night to obtain results and bring me good wishes - then I would like to hug the whole world of sport and thank all these good people. For Bismark once said 'the audience makes success.'"

Herma Szabo and Ludwig Wrede. Photos courtesy National Archives Of Poland (left) and Bildarchiv Austria (right).

By the 1926 World Championships in Stockholm, the tides of Herma's seemingly unstoppable skating career were already beginning to turn. She and Ludwig dropped to third in the pairs event behind The Brunets and Lilly Scholz and Otto Kaiser and her win in the women's event was extremely narrow for a change... owing to the emergence of a young Norwegian upstart named Sonja Henie.

Quoted in the documentary "ISU: 100 Years Of Skating 1892-1992", Herma explained, "Sonja Henie made my life very difficult and her father even more. In Stockholm at the Worlds, we were invited to the Austrian Consulate in the evening and I left my skates in the lounge. The next day was the competition and on my first step onto the ice the sole with the skates came off my shoe. It had been cut off with a razor blade. That was not nice." The school figures were delayed until her boot could be repaired. Fritzi Burger claimed Herma told her that she had seen a member of the Norwegian skating entourage in the corridor when she returned to her hotel room the night before the event. Incredibly, Herma managed to win her fifth consecutive World title.

The following year, the World Championships for women were held in the heart of Sonja Henie territory... Oslo, Norway. Although Herma had not once been defeated in the school figures at the World Championships before, she lost three judges to two to Henie at the Oslo Championships. The result remained exactly the same in the free skating and after reigning as World Champion for five successive years, Herma was ousted by Henie in what T.D. Richardson described as a "highly controversial" decision.

 

"No matter what I did, I could not win," claimed Herma. She was absolutely correct. Three of the judges had been Norwegian, one German and one Austrian and the competition had been judged blatantly down national lines. A similar situation, if not even more pronounced, occurred in the judging of the men's event that year. As a direct result of Herma and Briton Jack Page's losses and a subsequent media firestorm sparked by the late, great T.D. Richardson, the ISU later instituted a rule change allowing only one judge per country. In the midst of all of the drama, Herma returned to Vienna and won her second and final World title in pairs skating with Ludwig.

Top: Political cartoon from the "Sporttagblatt" mocking Sonja Henie and the judges at the 1927 World Championships. Bottom: Herma Szabo performing a spiral.

Just how bad was the controversy surrounding the women's event in Stockholm at the time? On February 23, 1927 - the day Herma and Ludwig won the pairs event in Vienna - the "Sporttagblatt" reported, "When the message arrived in Vienna that the invincible former woman world champion Herma Jaross-Szabo had been beaten and, as you heard, all three Norwegians who sat in the court of arbitration [voted for] their compatriot Sonja in the first place [we were] so outraged and indignant that [we can] speak bluntly of an organized fraud. It is not the first so-called scandal of this kind in skating, and it alas, will remain this way... The controversy over the rating is almost as old as the sport." Three days later, the "Illustriertes Sportblatt" even went so far as to insinuate that the Norwegian judges were motivated to vote for Sonja "both nationally and personally."

Herma ultimately retired from the sport just two weeks before the 1928 Winter Olympic Games in St. Moritz. She was as jaded as one might expect one to be after her Stockholm experience. She reportedly turned down several film offers, as well as a position as a fitness teacher in America.

Herma's medals and trophies

Now, here's what I love! When Herma retired, she set to work almost immediately doing everything she could to help other Austrian women beat Sonja Henie. In the wonderful 1998 documentary "Reflections On Ice: A Diary Of Ladies Figure Skating", Fritzi Burger-Russell recalled that "Herma came to my house in Vienna and brought me some tights and a skirt and said, 'Now try to beat her!'" She showed up at the Wiener Eislaufverein, schooled the girls in figure technique and helped Hedy Stenuf with her free skating. Despite her best efforts, nothing worked. Sonja just could not be beaten. When Maribel Vinson interviewed Sonja at the 1936 Winter Olympic Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, she asked her how she managed at her first Olympics. She replied, "I didn't have regular instruction until later but I had seen Mme Szabo-Plank the year before, and besides I always watched men skaters whenever I could and tried to imitate them. There didn't seem to be any reason why I couldn't do the things they did."

Pál Jaross. Photo courtesy Erdélyi Audiovizuális Archívum.

Herma also devoted much of her energy to a second sport: skiing. For several years, she represented the Ski Club Arlberg in downhill, slalom and competition races. Although she won a race on Schneeberg Mountain in 1932, for the most part, she never seemed to be able to manage to crack the top five in most races she entered. She sustained multiple injuries in January of 1937 in a serious skiing accident in Kitzbühel and was bedridden for some time.

The once 'it girl' of figure skating who had been married three times thusly ended her sporting career. She was very much interested in figure skating's development and relished in the success of Austrian figure skaters in the fifties. She certainly had an inside knowledge of the sport's development. One of her husbands, Hungarian Champion Pál Jaross, was a World Referee and Judge and ISU Official.

Herma was widowed in the late sixties. She spent her golden years living alone in a gabled mountain house in the quiet Upper Styrian market town of Admont, approximately one hundred miles southwest of Vienna. She had to use two canes to get around. When she was in her early eighties, she remarked, "All that remains of my youth is the discipline of a sportswoman. Every day, rain or shine, I force myself to walk 10 rounds in the garden."

Herma was inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall Of Fame in 1982. She passed away on May 7, 1986, at the age of eighty-four. 

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of "Jackson Haines: The Skating King" and pre-ordering "Sequins, Scandals & Salchows: Figure Skating in the 1980s", which will be released this fall where books are sold: https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.

The 1963 European Figure Skating Championships

From February 5 to 9, 1963, it snowed something fierce in Hungary but not sleet, nor snow could keep the people of Budapest away from the 1963 European Figure Skating Championships, held at the newly opened open-air Kisstadion, which boasted seating for fifteen thousand.

Photo courtesy Elaine Hooper, BIS Archive

The event played host to a stunning ice dance upset and some extremely erratic judging in multiple disciplines. Skaters from four different nations won in the four disciplines contested and huge crowds hung on every judge's mark, ready to cheer and boo along when their favourites were done right or wrong by those who determined their fates. Today on Skate Guard, we will take a look back at this historic competition!

Four of Hungary's six-member team at the 1963 European Championships

THE MEN'S COMPETITION

Manfred Schnelldorfer

Twenty-six-year-old 1962 European and World Silver Medallist Karol Divín missed the 1963 European Championships due to a sprained right instep during training in Bratislava. His absence made defending European Champion Alain Calmat the heavy favourite. The school figures - delayed partway through due to a blinding snowstorm - saw Calmat come from behind to defeat West Germany's Manfred Schnelldorfer six judges to three. The almost fourteen-point margin between them was considerable but not insurmountable.

British judge Geoffrey Yates, a 1936 Olympian who had fought on the beaches of Normandy during World War II, came under fire for placing Austria's Emmerich Danzer twelfth in the figures when the majority of the judging panel had him third. By the time the men were set to take the ice for the free skate, the snowstorm had subsided but the fog was so thick that many competitors had trouble breathing.

Top: Alain Calmat. Bottom: Sepp Schönmetzler. Photo courtesy "Winter Sports" magazine. 

Alain Calmat - a pupil of legendary French coach Jacqueline Vaudecrane - was far from outstanding in the free skate. He appeared nervous and missed crucial jumping passes early on in his performance. After putting a hand down on a triple loop attempt, he rebounded to end on a high note and earn seven 5.9s. Schnelldorfer's program featured double Axels and Lutzes but the judges weren't generous with the second mark.

Photo courtesy Elaine Hooper, BIS Archive

Six of the nine judges placed Alain Calmat in free skating, while the East German judge tied him with Manfred Schnelldorfer and the West German judge placed Schnelldorfer ahead of Calmat. Ever the contrarian, Geoffrey Yates gave first place in free skating to Schnelldorfer's teammate Sepp Schönmetzler, who landed a clean triple loop. In the end, Calmat ended up with the gold medal, Schelldorfer the silver and Danzer the bronze in a field of twenty-one. Schnelldorfer's medal win was particularly impressive in that two days before departing from Garmisch-Partenkirchen and travelling by bus through Vienna to Budapest, he had caught a nasty head and stomach cold and developed a dangerously high fever. When he arrived, he missed valuable training time while he recovered in bed.

THE ICE DANCE COMPETITION

Fresh off their first World title win, Czechoslovakian siblings Eva Romanová and Pavel Roman were brought down to earth with a crushing defeat in the ice dance competition in Budapest. Although six of the seven judges had them first in the free dance, the Czechs lost their title in the compulsory dances four judges to three to Great Britain's Linda Shearman and Michael Phillips. The dances were the Foxtrot, Westminster Waltz, Kilian and Argentine Tango.

Photo courtesy "Winter Sports" magazine

Linda Shearman and Michael Phillips had finished third at the European Championships in 1961 and second in 1962. They hailed from Birmingham but trained in Liverpool with coach Len Liggett. Their teammates Janet Sawbridge and David Hickinbottom, who took the bronze, had only been skating together for less than a year and were competing in their first international competition together. They trained at Queen's with Gladys Hogg and Harry Francis.

Photo courtesy Elaine Hooper, BIS Archive

In her book "Figure Skating History: The Evolution Of Dance On Ice", Lynn Copley-Graves recalled, "German TV broadcast all 13 free dances... A hairline decision in the place majority scoring system bumped the Hungarians [György Korda and Pál Vásárhelyi] up to fourth and knocked [Mary] Parry/[Roy] Mason down to fifth despite higher marks... Linda Shearman and Michael Phillips abandoned the 1962 controversial number for a polished program in the Courtney Jones' English-style tradition. The narrow margin of their 5.8's and 5.9's surrounded the air with suspense as the Czechs took the ice. Eva and Pavel, with a new free not so artistic as the last, but more original than that of Linda and Michael, placed first in the free dance... Only the West German judge, Dr. Freimut Stein, placed Shearman/Phillips first. The final results were so close it took an hour to tally the results. Some officials began preparing to celebrate a Czech victory, but Eva and Pavel's marks could not overcome the compulsory lead and upset of the British Champions." Switzerland's Marlyse Fornachon and Charly Pichard - students of Doreen Denny - placed sixth ahead of seven other teams from Czechoslovakia, France, West Germany, Austria and East Germany. Not long after, Denny was hired to teach Princess Grace of Monaco how to skate at Villars.

THE WOMEN'S COMPETITION

Sjoukje Dijkstra

In the women's competition in Budapest, there was Sjoukje Dijkstra... and everyone else. Coached by Arnold Gerschwiler, the young Dutch skater dominated the women's event from start to finish, placing first on every judge's scorecard on her way to her fourth consecutive European title. She wracked up an almost forty-five point lead in figures, trailed by Austria's Regine Heitzer.

Photo courtesy Elaine Hooper, BIS Archive

Sjoukje Dijkstra's performance in the free skating, which featured a fine double Axel, was as impressive as her effort in the figures. Geoffrey Yates was the only judge who dared place France's Nicole Hassler, who skated cleanly to Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony", ahead of Dijkstra. With a strong free skating performance, Czechoslovakian 'housewife' Jana Mrázková narrowly lost out on a medal to Hassler and Regine Heitzer. The latter medallist skated poorly in the free skate, falling badly on a double Lutz and two-footing a double Axel attempt. British skaters Sally-Anne Stapleford, Diana Clifton-Peach and Jacqueline Harbord placed fifth through seventh and in second to last place in her second trip to the European Championships was a young Tamara Bratus (Moskvina). In contrast to the other disciplines, the women's event was the only one to manage to avoid the snow from start to finish.

THE PAIRS COMPETITION

The pairs competition in Budapest marked the second trial of a two-phase pairs competition by the International Skating Union. In the September 30, 2015 Skate Guard blog "The Short Program Revisited", Sonia Bianchetti Garbato" explained that the event "consisted of two performances on different days... with performances being marked using the open system and with the result of the first performance being announced... The trial proved not to be so satisfactory, with more or less the same results in the two performances with a negative effect on the competitors having to perform the same program twice and generally, with a lower level of performance the second time."

Tatiana Zhuk and Alexander Gavrilov (left) and Marika Kilius and Hans-Jürgen Bäumler (right) 

The judging was as erratic as the skating was disappointing. Marika Kilius and Hans-Jürgen Bäumler of West Germany soundly defeated Soviets Ludmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov in both phases of the event for the gold, but some - including Heinz Magerlein - felt that an uncharacteristically poor performance by the Soviets at home at their National Championships in Moscow had damned them in the eyes of the judges before they even stepped foot on the ice in Budapest.

Marika Kilius and Hans-Jürgen Bäumler

There was no denying that Marika Kilius and Hans-Jürgen Bäumler had skated two technically outstanding programs. All nine judges gave them 5.9s for their second performance. That said, the Protopopovs possessed the whole package - something a twenty-one-year-old and nineteen-year-old necessarily didn't. In his book "Triumph On Ice", Heinz Magerlein asserted that Kilius and Bäumler's performances were "admirable" but that the Protopopovs had skated with "harmony, tranquility and elegance [with] the highlights, lifting jumps... the lasso, the loop jumps, etc. and pirouettes balanced and harmoniously integrated into an overall process."

Photo courtesy Elaine Hooper, BIS Archive

The fact of the matter was that the judging in the pairs event in Budapest was all over the freaking place. In the first performance of the free skate, the Polish judge had bronze medallists Tatiana Zhuk and Alexander Gavrilov eleventh. Fourth-place finishers Margit Senf and Peter Göbel of East Germany were too placed eleventh in that first performance by the judge from Switzerland. Twelfth-place finishers Galina Sedova and Georgi Proskurin of the Soviet Union received marks ranging from third through thirteenth in the first performance while fifth-place finishers Milada Kubíková and Jaroslav Votruba of Czechoslovakia's ordinals in the second performance ranged from fourth to twelfth. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The second trial of a two-program pairs event at the European Championships in Budapest was simply a disaster. It didn't help that the weather was awful. In the first round of competition, it was snowing so hard that the ice had to swept after every performance.

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of "Jackson Haines: The Skating King" and pre-ordering "Sequins, Scandals & Salchows: Figure Skating in the 1980s", which will be released this fall where books are sold: https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.

Beloved Mother, Champion And Virtuosa: The Yvonne Sherman Tutt Story

Photo courtesy Joseph Butchko Collection, an acquisition of the Skate Guard Archive

"Skating really should be an interpretation of music - almost ballet on ice... Rhythm, whether played from a musical score or expertly cut into ice with steel blades, gives satisfaction to performer and audience." - Yvonne Sherman, "Family Circle" magazine, 1951

"You must as well be yourself. After all, who else are you?" - Yvonne Sherman, February 5, 1950, "Albany, NY Times-Union"

Born May 3, 1930, in New York City, Yvonne Claire Sherman was the daughter of Swiss immigrants Walter and Claire Sherman. She grew up in a garden apartment on 79th Street in Jackson Heights, Queens with her older sister Margaret and younger brother Edward. Her parents met while ice skating in Switzerland and her father, a consulting engineer for a machinery firm, was a member of the Skating Club of New York.

Arthur Vaughn, Yvonne Sherman, Jane Vaughn and William Grimditch in 1939. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.

Yvonne's first love wasn't skating... it was playing the piano. At the age of seven, she made her debut as a concert pianist at Steinway Hall. In an interview in "Family Circle" magazine in 1951, she explained, "Skating came into my life as an antidote for something few parents have to worry about - too much piano playing by a six-year-old. I started taking piano lessons when I was four and I loved it - too much for my own good, according to my parents. They decided ice skating might be a good way to get me away from that too-enthralling keyboard. They took me to the Junior Skating Club atop New York's Madison Square Garden, where I was introduced to the famous skating coach and instructor Katie Schmidt. It was a red-letter day for me, if not for her. That day I tottered out onto the ice and spotted another youngster about my age skillfully cutting figures with what I thought to be astounding perfection. 'If she can do it, so can I,' I decided. 'And better,' I promised myself right then and there. Little Joan Coffman and I became fast friends and furious competitors from that day on and the following year we both were invited to skate in the children's number at the ice carnival given by the Skating Club of New York. 'Little Joan Coffman' and Yvonne's performance at Madison Square Garden in the Skating Club of New York's benefit for the Bellevue Hospital Social Relief Service was a huge hit. Yvonne portrayed Hansel; Joan was Gretel. They skated to the nursery rhyme "There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe". Quoted in the March 26, 1938 issue of "The New York Sun", her coach Katie Schmidt remarked, "She is a genius. She gives concert piano recitals, playing difficult pieces by Mozart and Schubert and Bach. She will grow up to be an accomplished skater."

Shortly after her 'grand debut on the ice, Yvonne began working with Howard Nicholson. She made her competitive debut in 1939, winning the Eastern Figure Skating Championships over skaters nearly twice her age. Lincoln A. Werden raved, "Little Yvonne Sherman of New York added a distinction to this meet by the way she skated both days... The 8-year-old lady in red velvet went through a repertoire that would have done credit to skaters many years older. She skated with confidence and her spins and jumps were noteworthy." That year at her first U.S. Championships in St. Paul, she finished dead last in the junior women's event.

Yvonne was successful at both the Middle Atlantic and Eastern Championships in the early 1940s, but similarly failed to translate those successes into wins on the national stage. In 1941, for instance, she failed to make the cut for the free skate in a field of fourteen. By 1943, she had left Howard Nicholson to take from Pierre Brunet. 

Yvonne with her competitors at the 1945 U.S. Championships. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.

Yvonne posing with medallists at the 1946 U.S. Championships

Yvonne finally had her big moment at the U.S. Championships in 1946, when she won the junior pairs title with Robert Swenning after finishing second the year before. In 1947, she claimed the U.S. junior women's title and was victorious in senior pairs, upsetting the favoured Kennedy Kids - Karol and Peter - who had finished second at the World Championships. 

In 1947, Yvonne also claimed medals in both singles and pairs at the North American Championships and graduated from the Professional Children's School, where she was president of her class. She earned the Greer-Robinson Memorial Scholarship for scholastic excellence for her academic achievements.

In December of 1947, a competition was held in Chicago to determine who would fill a spot on the 1948 Olympic team forfeited by Janette Ahrens, who'd retired after getting married. Yvonne, who had already qualified in pairs, bested Margaret Grant, Barbara Jones and four others to earn the singles berth.

Yvonne Sherman and Robert Swenning. Photo courtesy U.S. Olympic Committee Archives.

At the 1948 Winter Olympic Games in St. Moritz, seventeen-year-old Yvonne was the only member of the U.S. figure skating team skating 'double duty' in both singles and pairs. Incredibly, with next to no international experience, she placed sixth in singles and fourth in pairs.

Yvonne Sherman and Robert Swenning. Top photo courtesy Joseph Butchko Collection, an acquisition of the Skate Guard Archive.

At the World Championships that followed in Davos, Yvonne again made the top six in both disciplines. Interviewed by Patricia Shelley Bushman for her book "Indelible Tracings", Robert Swenning recalled, "On the day of the Olympics it was really snowing so I promptly went back to bed because I was sure it was cancelled. Then I got a phone call: 'Come on, it's clearing up.' Three-fourths of the pair teams competed in bright sunlight, and then it started to snow again. We were the last pair to skate; we were frozen and the judges were frozen. We wound up fourth because we couldn't hear our music and they couldn't see us. We went to Davos for the Worlds and the same thing happened. The other top skaters competed in the sunshine, and we wound up skating in a snowstorm and came in fifth." At the banquet following the event in Davos, she treated the skaters and judges to a pianoforte concerto at the Hotel Belvedere.

Photo courtesy "Skating World" magazine

When Yvonne returned home from Europe, she competed in the U.S. Championships in Colorado Springs. Disappointing, she lost the women's title to Gretchen Merrill after leading in figures and finished second in pairs to the Kennedy Kids. A popular number she skated in exhibitions that season was an interpretive piece to Jules Massenet's "Méditation" from "Thaïs". She was one of the first skaters to interpret the famous piece on ice.

Photo courtesy Joseph Butchko Collection, an acquisition of the Skate Guard Archive

After the 1948 season, Yvonne decided to focus solely on singles skating and ended her partnership with Robert. That summer, she was crowned Potato Queen by the Adirondack Potato Growers Association. Her ballet classes at the Swoboda School of Ballet started causing people to pay attention to her free skating, even if she did have a reputation for being rather cautious. Dick Button described her thusly: "A tall, lissome girl, Yvonne's main asset on the ice was her grace. An interpretive but not an athletic performer, she excelled in school figures, back bend spins - and in unwittingly breaking the hearts of her male colleagues." 

Yvonne Sherman, Robert Swenning, Gretchen Merrill, Dick Button and Eileen Seigh. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.

In 1949, Yvonne bested Gretchen Merrill at both the U.S. Championships and North American Championships, becoming the first U.S. woman to win the latter title since Maribel Vinson, who last took the title prior to World War II.

Photos courtesy Joseph Butchko Collection, an acquisition of the Skate Guard Archive

At the 1949 World Championships in Paris, Yvonne claimed the silver medal in a four-three split over Jeannette Altwegg, who would go on to win the gold medal at the 1952 Winter Olympic Games in Oslo. Interestingly, the British judge had Yvonne first in the free skate at that event. 

Photo courtesy "Skating World" magazine

Yvonne's successes in 1949 inspired Skating Club Of New York President David T. Layman Jr. to commission a bronze sculpture by artist Charles Keck called "Skating Girl", posed for by Yvonne. This piece was donated to the Metropolitan Museum Of Art for a time.

"Skating Girl" by Charles Keck

In 1950, Yvonne finished third at the World Championships in London, England, skating well but upstaged in the free skate on a night when many of the World's top skaters gave career-best performances. At the U.S. Championships that followed in Washington, D.C., she won the school figures over Sonya (Klopfer) Dunfield by the narrowest of margins. As Yvonne's strength was considered to be the figures, some felt that her narrow lead would be decimated by Sonya in the free skate. As it turned out, Sonya took a tumble early in her free skate. Yvonne had one of the finest performances of her career and easily defended her national title. In fact, it wasn't even close... she won by seventeen points! 

Photo courtesy Joseph Butchko Collection, an acquisition of the Skate Guard Archive

In "Tracings" magazine, Eugene Turner recalled, "Gifted with quality figures, but hexed with inferior free style... it was a rough road. Year after year, her usual lead in figures would disintegrate during the free skating. Blessed with a lovely style and musical taste, she at the same time appeared slow and weak, jumped poorly if at all. When her patience was finally rewarded it was not through any free skating improvement but because of the normal attrition at the top... So she decided to go to Gus Lussi for help... The old magician... went to work... [At the 1950 U.S. Championships] she appeared transformed; a human floodlight, a graceful dynamo, and electrical storm on skates. She was actually unrecognizable, as if she had decided to sell her soul to the devil for one huge performance. It was that master hypnotist Lussi. And perhaps that was what Gus Lussi did - hypnotize."

Yvonne Sherman and Dick Button at the 1950 U.S. Championships

Her goal to become World Champion unfulfilled, Yvonne retired from skating in 1950 to pursue a career as a concert pianist. Instead, she married army lieutenant and textile executive Arthur McGowan Jr. in October of that year, settled in Scarsdale, New York, skated in a few carnivals and devoted herself to motherhood and golf.

Left: Yvonne at her first wedding. Right: Yvonne in the sixties. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.

After Yvonne and Arthur divorced, she walked down the aisle with William Thayer Tutt, a President of the International Ice Hockey Federation who later served as the head of the Broadmoor Hotel and helped bring the USFSA headquarters to Colorado Springs. It was both Yvonne and William's second marriage.

Though Yvonne didn't take advantage of what could have been a very lucrative professional career in figure skating, she remained extremely active in the sport. In addition to serving on numerous USFSA committees, she acted as a judge at eight World Championships between 1965 and 1980. She also judged the men's and pairs events at the 1968 Winter Olympic Games in Grenoble and the women's event at the 1976 Winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck. She was very much admired by the skaters who competed during that period. Olympic Silver Medallist and two-time World Champion Tim Wood recalled, "Yvonne was a sweetheart... a real classy lady. Always dressed to the nines with her hair done... a very nice lady. I liked her."

In 1968, Yvonne helped organize a skating revue at the Playland Ice Casino in Rye in hopes of generating more interest in figure skating in the Westchester area. Before the show, she screened a color educational film about the sport made by the National Film Board of Canada. She told reporters, "There is very little juvenile delinquency in Canada, where ice sports occupy the attention of the youngsters many months of the year. The active youngster is rarely in trouble. The inactive ones spent their idle time thinking up what trouble to get into next. Let's keep our youngsters busy in sports. Let's keep them skating and playing hockey, and we'll develop fine citizens of tomorrow. By providing the sports and competitions which will include participators as well as spectators, we will get our children off the streets, away from the jukeboxes, and in healthy recreation."

Left: Yvonne Sherman and William Thayer Tutt at the 1979 Midwestern Championships at The Broadmoor. Right: Yvonne Sherman posing in the sixties.

Yvonne was inducted into the USFSA Hall Of Fame in 1991 at the same time her late husband William Thayer Tutt was inducted posthumously. She remained active in the figure skating community her entire life and passed away on February 2, 2005, in Colorado Springs, Colorado at the age of seventy-four. Her gravestone reads, "Beloved Mother, Champion And Virtuosa".

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.