Micheline Lannoy and Pierre Baugniet were born six months apart in 1925. Micheline was born in Brussels on January 31; Pierre in Antwerp on July 23. Micheline's mother Simone was an aspiring figure skater; her stepfather Louis de Ridder represented Belgium in three different sports in the Winter Olympics in the twenties and thirties - hockey, bobsleigh and speed skating. Pierre's father René's background is unknown.
Photo courtesy "Skating World" magazine
Micheline started skating at the age of seven; Pierre at the age of nine. Even as small children, the young skaters were regarded as two of the Ligue Belge des Sports d'Hiver's most promising young stars. Before World War II, they both won the 'scolaire' and junior classes at the Belgian Championships in singles skating. She claimed the Belgian women's title in 1941, 1944 and 1946; he took the men's from 1940 to 1944. Micheline also won the Suvretta Challenge Cup, an international event for junior skaters, in 1939.
Top: Pierre Baugniet and Hans Gerschwiler. Bottom: Charles Landot and Pierre Baugniet.
Micheline and Pierre both trained mostly in Belgium, but before the War travelled to St. Moritz for stints in the winter to work with Charles Landot, a skater and painter whom sportswriter Howard Bass described as a "shrewd, white-haired pedagogue". Monsieur Landot primarily taught at the Suvretta House rink but would come to Brussels or Antwerp in the spring and autumn to work with Belgian skaters.
Micheline and Pierre began skating as a pair somewhat by accident. In a 1947 letter to Theresa Weld Blanchard, Pierre's father René recalled, "It was only in 1943 that one day Micheline and Pierre were trying pair skating, just as a recreation, when Mr. [Landot] noticed suddenly how easily they worked together. This evidently resulted from the fact that they had always skated on the same rinks, with the same trainer, having both the same methods, same style, same positions as well as a similar speed." The following year the duo won their first Belgian title. Their country's Nationals weren't held in 1945 because the Antwerp rink was severely damaged by V-1 and V-2 bombs. When Belgium was liberated by the British and American armies, the bombed Antwerp rink was repaired surprisingly quickly and by the autumn of 1945, skating resumed and they repeated as Belgian champions in 1946 and 1947.
In the winter of 1945-46, Micheline and Pierre travelled to Amsterdam, The Hague, Chamonix and Paris, and met skaters Hans Gerschwiler and Daphne Walker along the way. As travels to Switzerland hadn't been possible at the height of the War, it was a great pleasure for them to have contact with the 'outside world' of skating.
By the autumn of 1946, Micheline and Pierre were finally able to resume their trips to St. Moritz to practice with Monsieur Landot. At the very first post-War ISU Championship, the Europeans in Davos, they claimed the gold medal over British pair Winnie and Dennis Silverthorne. Another Belgian duo - Suzanne Diskeuve and Edmond Verbustel - took the bronze. It was the first and only time two Belgian pairs stood on the podium at a major ISU Championship.
At the 1947 World Championships in Stockholm, all but the American judge had Micheline and Pierre first. They made again history as the first (and to date only) Belgian pair to win a World title and became sporting heroes in their country. In his book "Dick Button On Skates", Dick Button told an amusing story about Pierre Baugniet's time in Scandinavia. He wrote, "In the restaurant at rinkside many competitors, tired but anxious to learn the results [of the men's figures] waited over a cup of strong coffee. One of them, Pierre Baugniet... had not competed that day. His energies were irrepressible while others sat around quietly. Failing to engage us in conversation, he tried to chat with a pretty waitress despite the fact that he spoke no Swedish. The language barrier, however, was a bagatelle to the polished Belgian and when someone whispered a Swedish phrase to him he repeated it: 'Jag älskar dig'. The waitress took one look at him, dumped the cream pastry she was serving upside down on his plate and huffed off. We roared to see the deflated Pierre's expression when he was informed he had told the girl, 'I love you.'"
Micheline and Pierre began skating as a pair somewhat by accident. In a 1947 letter to Theresa Weld Blanchard, Pierre's father René recalled, "It was only in 1943 that one day Micheline and Pierre were trying pair skating, just as a recreation, when Mr. [Landot] noticed suddenly how easily they worked together. This evidently resulted from the fact that they had always skated on the same rinks, with the same trainer, having both the same methods, same style, same positions as well as a similar speed." The following year the duo won their first Belgian title. Their country's Nationals weren't held in 1945 because the Antwerp rink was severely damaged by V-1 and V-2 bombs. When Belgium was liberated by the British and American armies, the bombed Antwerp rink was repaired surprisingly quickly and by the autumn of 1945, skating resumed and they repeated as Belgian champions in 1946 and 1947.
In the winter of 1945-46, Micheline and Pierre travelled to Amsterdam, The Hague, Chamonix and Paris, and met skaters Hans Gerschwiler and Daphne Walker along the way. As travels to Switzerland hadn't been possible at the height of the War, it was a great pleasure for them to have contact with the 'outside world' of skating.
Top: Micheline Lannoy and Pierre Baugniet practicing in Switzerland. Bottom: Micheline Lannoy, Pierre Baugniet and others taking tea at the Richmond Sports-Drome. Photo courtesy "Skating World" magazine.
By the autumn of 1946, Micheline and Pierre were finally able to resume their trips to St. Moritz to practice with Monsieur Landot. At the very first post-War ISU Championship, the Europeans in Davos, they claimed the gold medal over British pair Winnie and Dennis Silverthorne. Another Belgian duo - Suzanne Diskeuve and Edmond Verbustel - took the bronze. It was the first and only time two Belgian pairs stood on the podium at a major ISU Championship.
At the 1947 World Championships in Stockholm, all but the American judge had Micheline and Pierre first. They made again history as the first (and to date only) Belgian pair to win a World title and became sporting heroes in their country. In his book "Dick Button On Skates", Dick Button told an amusing story about Pierre Baugniet's time in Scandinavia. He wrote, "In the restaurant at rinkside many competitors, tired but anxious to learn the results [of the men's figures] waited over a cup of strong coffee. One of them, Pierre Baugniet... had not competed that day. His energies were irrepressible while others sat around quietly. Failing to engage us in conversation, he tried to chat with a pretty waitress despite the fact that he spoke no Swedish. The language barrier, however, was a bagatelle to the polished Belgian and when someone whispered a Swedish phrase to him he repeated it: 'Jag älskar dig'. The waitress took one look at him, dumped the cream pastry she was serving upside down on his plate and huffed off. We roared to see the deflated Pierre's expression when he was informed he had told the girl, 'I love you.'"
Top: Micheline Lannoy and Pierre Baugniet returning to Belgium after winning the 1947 World title. Bottom: Hans Gerschwiler and Pierre Baugniet at Pierre's family's villa on the Belgian Coast in 1947. Photo courtesy "Ice Skating" magazine.
After the 1947 World Championships, rumours swirled that Micheline and Pierre planned on breaking up because they hadn't been seen practicing together for some months. The truth of the matter was that Pierre had undergone an appendectomy. He recovered within months, graduated from the University of Brussels and was back training with Micheline by the late fall.
History was made once again at the 1948 Winter Olympic Games when Micheline and Pierre won the pairs event. It was Belgium's first (and to date only) gold medal in any sport at the Winter Olympic Games... and they claimed it in a snowstorm after only weeks of practice time.
In a February 22, 1988 interview with a reporter from "The Whig Standard", Micheline recalled, "We were used to it. Actually, it helped me because I was nervous and when it started snowing somehow it calmed me down... You can imagine, it was quite different (from what skaters are doing today). We did some jumps, but we didn't do triples. Lots of things they do now we didn't do at the time. Otherwise, it was similar but not as difficult. We had two jumps and a one-and-a-half Axel. It was a lot at that time. At that time, we were doing the most. They had all the flags from all the countries, except ours. They played the anthem, but they didn't have the flag. They probably thought, 'Oh, that little country of Belgium.' Belgium is small and we didn't have the skaters. That's what helped us, I guess. We used to skate all morning and there would be only a few people on the ice. We didn't have clubs like you have now. We used to skate among the public skating, but in the morning there was no one there so we had the ice to ourselves." Following the Olympics, they had another runaway victory at the World Championships in Davos and then decided to retire from the sport, their goals having been achieved. Their successes didn't translate to a big Belgian skating boom. By 1955, the country only had one ice rink, located in Antwerp.
Pierre, who had earned his Bachelor of Arts shortly after winning his first World title, continued his education and earned his doctorate in law, then married Arlette Maloens. The couple divorced in the early seventies and he went on to work as an average adjuster at the Antwerp firm Martroye, Baugniet and Varlez.
Micheline made her professional debut with Tom Arnold's continental company, which toured Europe and South Africa. She later performed in the short-lived Olympia Ice Revue, directed by her stepfather, and Holiday On Ice. She also performed in one of Tom Arnold's ice pantomimes at the S.S. Brighton in England. As a professional, she was paired with James Macaulay, a Scottish skater who served as a paratrooper in the British Army during the War. The couple fell in love and married in Paris, before settling in Ayr.
On November 17, 1953, Micheline's fifty-one year mother - who was then working as a skating instructor - was murdered. An article from the "Spokane Daily Chronicle" noted, "Police sought a tall, thin man who was believed to have pushed Mrs. de Ridder from an international train before dawn yesterday after robbing her. The woman died without regaining consciousness. Hospital aides said she had suffered a skull fracture and internal injuries. The Kitzingen station master told police that as the train rolled slowly through the yards he saw a woman clinging to a window ledge while a man tried to pry her grip loose. Trainmen found Mrs. de Ridder alongside the tracks." The saddest thing about it all? Micheline was on her way to meet her mother at the time.
Micheline and her husband James emigrated to Canada in 1956 and had two children. She taught skating in Stratford, Ontario and Aylmer, Quebec in the fifties and Victoria and Nanaimo, British Columbia in the sixties. Pierre passed away in his mid-fifties in 1981, the same year as Micheline's stepfather. By this time, Micheline was coaching at the Kingston Figure Skating Club.
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, Bluesky, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering one of six fascinating books highlighting the history of figure skating: https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.
Top: Micheline Lannoy and Pierre Baugniet performing their program. Right: Pierre Baugniet, Charles Landot and Micheline Lannoy. Photo courtesy "Ice Skating" magazine.
In a February 22, 1988 interview with a reporter from "The Whig Standard", Micheline recalled, "We were used to it. Actually, it helped me because I was nervous and when it started snowing somehow it calmed me down... You can imagine, it was quite different (from what skaters are doing today). We did some jumps, but we didn't do triples. Lots of things they do now we didn't do at the time. Otherwise, it was similar but not as difficult. We had two jumps and a one-and-a-half Axel. It was a lot at that time. At that time, we were doing the most. They had all the flags from all the countries, except ours. They played the anthem, but they didn't have the flag. They probably thought, 'Oh, that little country of Belgium.' Belgium is small and we didn't have the skaters. That's what helped us, I guess. We used to skate all morning and there would be only a few people on the ice. We didn't have clubs like you have now. We used to skate among the public skating, but in the morning there was no one there so we had the ice to ourselves." Following the Olympics, they had another runaway victory at the World Championships in Davos and then decided to retire from the sport, their goals having been achieved. Their successes didn't translate to a big Belgian skating boom. By 1955, the country only had one ice rink, located in Antwerp.
Pierre, who had earned his Bachelor of Arts shortly after winning his first World title, continued his education and earned his doctorate in law, then married Arlette Maloens. The couple divorced in the early seventies and he went on to work as an average adjuster at the Antwerp firm Martroye, Baugniet and Varlez.
Micheline made her professional debut with Tom Arnold's continental company, which toured Europe and South Africa. She later performed in the short-lived Olympia Ice Revue, directed by her stepfather, and Holiday On Ice. She also performed in one of Tom Arnold's ice pantomimes at the S.S. Brighton in England. As a professional, she was paired with James Macaulay, a Scottish skater who served as a paratrooper in the British Army during the War. The couple fell in love and married in Paris, before settling in Ayr.
On November 17, 1953, Micheline's fifty-one year mother - who was then working as a skating instructor - was murdered. An article from the "Spokane Daily Chronicle" noted, "Police sought a tall, thin man who was believed to have pushed Mrs. de Ridder from an international train before dawn yesterday after robbing her. The woman died without regaining consciousness. Hospital aides said she had suffered a skull fracture and internal injuries. The Kitzingen station master told police that as the train rolled slowly through the yards he saw a woman clinging to a window ledge while a man tried to pry her grip loose. Trainmen found Mrs. de Ridder alongside the tracks." The saddest thing about it all? Micheline was on her way to meet her mother at the time.
Micheline and her husband James emigrated to Canada in 1956 and had two children. She taught skating in Stratford, Ontario and Aylmer, Quebec in the fifties and Victoria and Nanaimo, British Columbia in the sixties. Pierre passed away in his mid-fifties in 1981, the same year as Micheline's stepfather. By this time, Micheline was coaching at the Kingston Figure Skating Club.
Micheline passed away on March 18, 2023, at the age of ninety-eight. Despite their successes, Micheline and Pierre have never been honoured with an induction into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame.
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, Bluesky, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering one of six fascinating books highlighting the history of figure skating: https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.