Brilliant Brits: The Hilary Green And Glyn Watts Story

Photo courtesy "Ice Skate" magazine

Hilary Green first headed to the rink as a ten year old in 1961 after seeing a televised skating broadcast on BBC. Glyn Watts got his start on rollers around the age of six or seven, when his older sisters who were babysitting him dragged him to a rink. He finished third at the national level and was going to go international, but his coach moved to New Zealand. After finishing school, he relocated from the small town of Herne Bay to London at the height of Beatlemania, where he apprenticed as a women's hairdresser with Vidal Sassoon . Celebrities regularly frequented the salon and he got to rub shoulders with Paul McCartney himself. Glyn took up ice skating as a personal challenge but found the transition from rollers to ice incredibly difficult. Soon, he met Hilary, and the two formed an unlikely dance duo. They trained at the Silver Blades rink in Streatham with Peri Horne, a 1952 Olympian in pairs skating. "We struck the right balance from the start. Glyn is nearly a foot taller than my five feet two inches, and we size well together," said Hilary in a 1974 interview with sportswriter Howard Bass.

Photo courtesy German Federal Archives

Hilary and Glyn made their debut at the British Ice Dance Championships in November 1966, finishing fourth in the junior event. The following autumn, they placed third at the Queens Cup Open Ice Dance competition behind Yvonne Suddick and Malcolm Cannon and Susan Thompson and James Young and sixth in their first appearance as seniors at the British Championships. By 1969, they'd moved up the ranks to third and earned a trip to their first international competition, the 1970 European Championships in Leningrad, where they placed an impressive seventh.

Video courtesy Frazer Ormondroyd

In the two years that followed, Hilary and Glyn earned two British silver medals and top ten finishes at two European and two World Championships. By November of 1972, when they earned their first of four British consecutive titles, they were considered bona fide medal contenders. Continuing to train under Peri Horne's watchful eye, both worked part-time to help pay for their training expenses, supplementing the cost with sponsorship by John Staples of MK Skates. The duo took took ballet lessons and did muscle-building exercises at a London hospital. They trained between eleven o'clock at night and three o'clock in the morning at the Streatham rink and on ridiculously crowded public sessions.

All the hard work paid off at the 1973 European Championships in Cologne, West Germany, where Hilary and Glyn staged a major upset by defeating Janet Sawbridge and Peter Dalby and claiming the bronze medal. It was Janet's tenth European Championships... and she had medalled at six of them. 

At the World Championships that followed in Bratislava, Hilary and Glyn again managed to win bronze ahead of Sawbridge and Dalby, firmly establishing themselves as Britain's number one ice dance team. 

That October, Hilary and Glyn defeated twelve other teams including future Olympic Gold Medallists Natalia Linchuk and Gennadi Karponosov to win the Prestige Cutlery Awards. They also won the very first Skate Canada International in Calgary, besting Louise and Barry Soper, Irina Moiseeva and Andrei Minenkov and eight other teams. It was, Glyn remembered, "a bloody good experience. What a lovely place! We took a trip down to Banff. I sometimes wonder why I came to the States!" At the 1974 European and World Championships, they moved up to second behind Lyudmila Pakhomova and Alexander Gorshkov. 

Hilary Green and Glyn Watts on the podium at the 1974 World Championships. Photo courtesy "Skate & Ski" magazine.

If ever there was a time that Hilary and Glyn thought they should have placed higher, it was in Munich at the 1974 World Championships. To improve their compulsories, they'd started working with Bernard Spencer - a stickler for good technique. Though Pakhomova and Gorshkov turned heads with their Tango Romantica, Hilary and Glyn's OSP was equally delightful. Glyn recalled, "We had a tango to Habanera from Carmen. We had gone with Bill and Bobbie Irvine, who were the ballroom dance champions ten times in England. They choreographed it for us and the crowd just loved it. I think Brian Moynahan was the correspondent and he said it was by far the better of the OSP's - it had such a tango feel. The free dance we had that year was pretty good too, so I thought we had a good chance. Second was good, but first would have been better." Later in the year, the National Skating Association honoured them with the prestigious Vandervell Trophy. Although many considered Pakhomova and Gorshkov unbeatable, Hilary and Glyn held onto hope that they might somehow stage an upset two years later at the very first Olympic ice dance competition in Innbsruck in 1976.

Hilary Green and Glyn Watts with coach Peri Horne. Photo courtesy David Price.

By 1975, signs were already starting to show that their number two position in the political world of ice dance was in jeopardy. Though they held on to win silver at the European Championships in Copenhagen when Glyn was sick with chest congestion, they did so on the strength of their compulsories. The judges placed them third in the free dance behind Linichuk and Karponosov. At the World Championships that followed in Colorado Springs, they dropped to third behind two teams that they had defeated the previous years, Moiseeva and Minenkov and Americans Colleen O'Connor and Jim Millns.

 

 At the 1975 World Championships in Colorado Springs, Hilary and Glyn made a little skating history by being the first amateur ice dance team to include a kiss in their performance in their Blues OSP. Glyn recalled, "We had a little sequence where we were slow dancing in the corner. I used to be a bit of ham and there was one section where we'd do this smooching kiss and then breakaway. Every time I'd breakaway I'd look at that section of the crowd and pull a stupid face. They caught on to this, so by the second or third pattern - because you used to have to do three patterns - they were just waiting for it."

Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine

By the Olympic season, Hilary and Glyn were receiving stiffer competition at home from Kay Barsdell and Kenneth Foster and Janet Thompson and Warren Maxwell. Although they managed to win their fourth British title, they dropped to fifth at the European Championships and placed a shocking seventh at the Winter Olympics. Glyn remembered, "We had a really tragic year. I don't like to make excuses, but when you're a partnership you really are one person. Hilary's father came down, earlier in the year, with really bad cancer. She was terribly close to her Dad. Subsequently, he was admitted to the Royal Marsden... very frequently in and out, in and out. We'd get to the rink and she'd break down crying. I don't think we had a solid week of training. It was always two or three days on, then off. I'll be honest. We shouldn't have gone to the Olympics. It was the fact that it was the first time. You cross your fingers and hope everything's going to work out but as much as I'm thrilled to have been an Olympian, it was really not such a great experience. It was disappointing to finish that way."

Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine

Not long after, Hilary followed Peter Dalby to America to embark on a coaching career, but was homesick and returned to England not long after. Glyn taught in England for a while, taking Denise Best through her Gold Dance Test, before going to America also. John Curry had mentioned him to Nancy Streeter, who was President of the Skating Club of New York at the time. He taught there with Sonya and Peter Dunfield, building up the dance program at the Sky Rink. Within six months, he was standing at the boards with his first champion pupils, Judi Genovesi and Kent Weigle. He went on to coach in New Jersey and Connecticut and while teaching with Peter Burrows in Long Island, he started working moreso with singles skaters - among them Burrows' future wife Katherine Healy. Glyn recalled, "I had the opportunity to go back to England to open a hotel business with my in-laws. We were there for about six or seven months but things just didn't work out. I looked into coming back to the States. I still had my green card, so I was current. I had a nice offer from the Boston Skating Club, one from Atlanta and Carol [Heiss Jenkins]. Carol had met me a few times at Nationals and said she'd watched how I was with the kids and thought I'd be a good fit for her, so I came to Cleveland. I think my first lesson was Lisa Ervin, when she was like seven years old or something... We've been here ever since." Over the years, Glyn has worked with a number of top American skaters, including Lisa Ervin, Tonia Kwiatkowski, Timothy Goebel, Jenni Meno, Aren Nielsen, Colin and Parker Pennington and Ryan Hunka. 

Hilary has coached for decades in Great Britain, and recently worked out of the Absolutely Ice arena in Slough, a town just west of London, England. Glyn coaches at the Winterhurst Arena three days a week, but is planning on retiring this year. His coaching partner is now Tonia Kwiatkowski, his former student. He was rinkside in Detroit at the 1994 U.S. Championships, when the attack on Nancy Kerrigan occurred. He remembered, "We had Lisa and Tonia. I was in the Cobo, the other training rink, with Lisa. We were just sitting watching the practices and all of a sudden there was a scuffle across the rink, people running in and out the curtains and the next thing we heard Nancy's been attacked and all this business. In all fairness, I know she got in with a bad crowd but in the locker room, I liked Tonya! She was a rough and ready girl. I'm not condoning what she did but... she was sociable, she'd say hi. She was approachable."

Though Hilary and Glyn won three medals at the World Championships, they are perhaps the most overlooked top ice dance team of the seventies. Their career, despite its challenges, deserves far more recognition.

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 the 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.

The Finse Skøitehallen

Photo courtesy Nasjonalbiblioteket

"I spent unforgettable vacations at Finse. It is wonderful on this earth to find places where everything tastes good, everything smells good, everyone seems young, and everyone young seems witty and wise. Ponce de Leon may or may not have discovered springs in Florida, but I am one of thousands who discovered Finse." - Florence Jaffray Harriman, "Mission To The North", 1941

Surrounded by glaciers and snow-covered slopes, Finse was largely uninhabited until the late nineteenth century. Its barren land was used solely by hunters and farmers. Due to its altitude - some four thousand feet above sea level in the mountains of Hordaland, Norway - it was winter there for almost ten months of the year.

Photo courtesy Nasjonalbiblioteket

Finse became a popular winter sports destination for British and Russian tourists when a mountain lodge style hotel was opened in the spring of 1909 after the Bergen Railway was completed. The hotel had 'all the modern conveniences' - central heating, electric lights, a billiard room and baths. As was the local custom, guests sliced their own Fjellbrød and served themselves salt-cured meat and fish, coffee and beer. Laps often passed the hotel's front doors while driving herds of reindeer. The hotel played host to many distinguished guests, among them King Haakon, Ernest Shackleton, Fridtjof Nansen and Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke. When they stayed at the hotel, Sir Francis Lindley taught the Prince Of Wales how to ski. The hotel was right by a lake, but as temperatures often dipped as low as minus thirty five degrees Celsius, owners Alice Lister Fangen and Joseph Klem came up with the idea of constructing an indoor rink in the hotel out of sensibility for the hotel's guests.

Photo courtesy Nasjonalbiblioteket

The Finse Skøitehallen was a one thousand and thirty six square meter ice rink with no columns and windows on all three sides. Wood stoves heated the building and two hundred bulbs installed in the ceiling provided ample lighting at night for skaters. Though originally used only for recreational skating by the hotel's guests, the nearly year-round soon drew in Norway's top curlers, speed and figure skaters. Prior to his 1916 trip to America, famed speed skater Oscar Mathisen practiced in Finse. Less than four years later, Norway's 1920 Summer Olympic figure skating team - Ingrid Guldbrandsen, Margot Moe, Andreas Krogh, Martin Stixrud and Alexia and Yngvar Bryn - took up residence there before heading to Antwerp to compete.

Sonja Henie at the Finse Skøitehallen. Screenshots courtesy video from Nasjonalbiblioteket.

As a fifteen year old preparing for the 1928 Winter Olympic Games, Sonja Henie trained with Martin Stixrud at the Finse Skøitehallen during the off-season when there wasn't ice at the Frogner Stadion. Her family had a hunting lodge less than fifty kilometers away in Geilo, so it was familiar territory. Footage of her training in Finse was used in the Swedish film "Sju Dagar For Elizabeth". In her book "Wings On My Feet", Henie recalled, "Finse had become our private training place to a large extent, since I used the ice most and more seriously than anyone else in the good spot... The ice was excellent early in the fall, making it quite unnecessary to go abroad, and father was sticking to his wise principle that it is good to train away from one's rivals... I put on small exhibitions of the most informal sort, and interested people of the neighbourhood turned out in large numbers to watch them. Sometimes people came all the way from Geilo for these homespun performances, though all we had to offer were nearly impromptu improvisations with father in charge of the music and that often amounting to no more than a gramophone."

Andreas and Joseph Klem on the ice at the Finse Skøitehallen. Photo courtesy Nasjonalbiblioteket.

Not all visitors were impressed with the Finse Skøitehallen's facilities. In 1912, H.K. Daniel lamented, "If this venture is to be pursued on the same scale as in Switzerland, then Swiss methods must also be adopted... Public moneys must be forthcoming for the acquisition and upkeep of the necessary... skating terrenes."

Photo courtesy Universitetsbiblioteket, Universitetet i Bergen

During World War II, Finse was occupied by Nazi forces, who planned to build an airport on the Hardangerjøkulen glacier. Only one plane landed there and the project was scrapped. In 1940, the Finse Skøitehallen was hit by an Allied bomb and badly damaged. Tourism at Finse's hotel slowed after the War and the local population, which relied largely on tourism, diminished greatly. The Finse Skøitehallen was quietly demolished in 1973, its glory days as one of Norway's first indoor ice rinks all but forgotten.

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 the 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.

Premier Danseur: The Alfred Mégroz Story

Photo courtesy Bibliothèque nationale de France

If you were a Lutz lover in Switzerland in the roaring twenties, you definitely knew the name Alfred Mégroz. The thirtysomething skater was the pride of the Club des Patineurs de Lausanne at the time, amassing win after win at the Swiss Figure Skating Championships from 1919 to 1924 while serving on the board of his skating club. After placing a disastrous eighth out of nine competitors in the figure skating competition at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium, he penned a report to the Olympic organizers advocating for a Winter Sports Week in Chamonix, France. We now remember that event as the 1924 Winter Olympic Games.

At the Bandy Rink in St. Moritz in a skating competition held in conjunction with a reunion of skating enthusiasts who frequented the Kulm Hotel, Alfred won the men's event, waltzed to first place ahead of Britons Madeleine and Kenneth Macdonald Beaumont and Ethel Muckelt and Leslie Hoov and judged the women's competition. Though an accomplished competitor who wore many hats, Alfred's most important contributions to the skating world came after he turned professional in 1925.

After training skaters at the Patinoire Ste-Catherine for two years, Alfred made a living at the Caux-Palace, where he took the (then) unorthodox step of instructing skaters both on the ice... and at the ballet barre. Alfred's students included Louis Pache, Francoise Benois, Martine Galie, Riviana Casella and Claudine Huguenin. In between skating lessons, he took the ice himself in a neverending series of exhibitions throughout Switzerland, extolling to anyone who would listen the virtues of artistic skating to classical music. In every sense, he was the obscure thirties version of John Curry.

Alfred Mégroz and Yvonne de Ligne

It was a 1928 exhibition at the Palace à Montana with Belgian Champion Yvonne de Ligne that first really made everyone take notice. In between demonstrations of school figures, Alfred performed exhibitions to Ernest Gillet's "La Lettre de Manon", Franz Schubert's "Impromptu" and Arthur Rubinstein's "Valse Caprice in E flat major". The January 31, 1928 edition of the "Nouvelliste Valaisan" called it a "superb artistic and athletic event" full of "wonderfully harmonious undulating movements." The following year, he wowed the residents of Neuchâtel with the city's first true ice show, which featured Alfred's interpretations of waltzes by Frédéric Chopin and an artistic duet with his student, Ada Muller of Montreux. The fact that he had studied dance under famed Russian prima ballerina Vera Trefilova was evident in his refined performances.

Alfred Mégroz and Mme. Goudet skating in Geneva, Switzerland

Like John Curry, Alfred Mégroz developed his own troupe, consisting mainly of students and those who shared his belief that skating should be approached moreso an art than a sport. Though lacking in flashy costumes and travelling spotlights, the troupe created pieces set to the music of Franz Schubert and Claude Debussy. They even took on Charles Gounod's "Faust". Describing one of the troupe's shows - which consisted of seven separate acts - in January 1932, a reporter from "L'Express" wrote: "One begins to understand just what that 'physical pleasure' of the mysterious skating [means], this thirst for air, light, movement. It provides joy... opens new horizons. One could not be surprised to see skaters such as Grafström and Henie enter deliberately into the footsteps of the stubborn creator of this genre, Alfred Mégroz." The testimonials continued to pour in. "La Villageoise", describing one of his performances in January 1934 raved that he was "an artist who worked with a grace and infinite ease on ice... His interpretations of classical music are excellent, especially 'The Swan' by St-Saens [which was] a great success."

Alfred Mégroz ice dancing with Emmy Andersen

One chilly December afternoon at the Molitor Rink in Paris in 1935, Alfred hosted a séance, followed by an exhibition where he skated to classical music. It went over so well, the next month two time Olympic Gold Medallists Andrée and Pierre Brunet joined in on the fun in a rousing encore. The French loved the theatrics of the Swiss skating artist and hired him on to work with French Champions Gaby Clericetti and Jean Henrion. The Swiss newspaper "L'Temps" praised the decision of their neighbours: "We must congratulate Mr. Mégroz for the trust placed in him, perfectly justified in the eyes of those who know his incomparable mastery."

Alfred's artistic chops were put to to the test in 1937, when he went to Great Britain to work with Claude Langdon on "Rhapsody On Ice", a lavish skating production developed by impresario Claude Langdon and staged at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. The production consisted of two bona fide ice ballets, "The Enchanted Night" and "The Brahman's Daughter". Alfred conceived "The Enchanted Night" and choreographed both productions, working with a who's who of professional skating in the process, including Belita Jepson-Turner, Phil Taylor, Harrison Thomson, The Brunet's and Frick and Frack. In his 1959 book "Ice-Skating: A History", Nigel Brown wrote, "It was mainly through the enthusiasm of Alfred Mégroz... that 'Enchanted Night' and 'The Brahman's Daughter' saw the light of day. He sought to combine the principles of ballet and skating, a unification as he believed of art and sport. He made the vital mistake of not understanding that skating was... a very different art form from ballet." Although the shows were largely panned by critics, skater after skater he worked with in "Rhapsody On Ice" went on to long and influential professional careers, shaping the artistic landscape of figure skating through both their performances and work as coaches and choreographers.

Following the Covent Garden production, Alfred returned to Switzerland and taught with Alexander Schlageter at the Patinoire de Montchoisi in Lausanne before opening l'Ecole de patinage du Windsor Palace in Villars-Chesières, where he kept skating lessons and tests for youngsters alive throughout World War II. In the forties, he served as President of the Swiss Skating Association and in in the fifties, acted as President of the Schweizer Eislauflehrer-Verband (Swiss Professional Skating Teachers' Association). 

After dedicating a lifetime to the betterment of the sport, Alfred retired to Montreux and died June 30, 1956 at the age of seventy two while visiting Pregny-Chambésy, Switzerland, after living with diabetes for many years. Though rarely given a lick of attention, his contributions to figure skating were extremely valuable.

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 the 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.

A Number Of U.S. Novice Men's Champions

In today's world, technology has played an important role in increasing the visibility of novice and junior figure skating competitions. In years past, novice and junior winners at national figure skating competitions were treated as footnotes in newspaper articles and their performances were rarely - if ever - featured on television broadcasts. Today, we'll be taking a trip down memory lane and exploring the stories of 6.0 young men who each had one thing in common - they were U.S. novice men's champions.

SAMUEL FERGUSON

"One Samuel F. should heed the rumour
And read that which a costumer
Of highly celebrated rating
Has put in glowing words in 'Skating.'
Let him think more of fabric pliable,
Of Glitter Ray and Taffeta reliable.
And for her poem thank Miss Bijur,
Although its truth may be abjured
For men who skate may well make haste
And go consult a lady's taste,
Since what men wear on skates
Is more important than their eights.

Oh men, remove your eyes for skirts
And pay attention to your shirts!
Your habits - such as price can buy -
Should never with the rainbow vie.
With double-breasted coat enhance
Your manly form - (and also pants),
And never merely buy a cap
But have one made that has some snap.
The moral: Gentlemen look nice
For skating if you'd cut some ice."

- Samuel Ferguson, "Skating" magazine, February 1931

Would-be poet Samuel Ferguson of the Skating Club of New York holds the distinction of being the first person in history to win a U.S. novice men's title. He took top honours back in 1932 at the Ice Club in New York City.

DICK MORE

Photo (HUD 346.04, Page 181) courtesy Harvard University Archives. Used with permission.

The son of William and Dorothy More, Richard 'Dick' Wilson More was born July 28, 1924 in Buffalo, New York. His father was a second generation fur hat and men's clothing merchant. The More family was well off, with a live-in cook and maid attending to their needs. Dick attended the Nichols School in Buffalo and enjoyed playing golf as a young man.

Dick started skating at the Buffalo Skating Club during The Great Depression, and won the Eastern novice title in 1940. The following year, he took the Eastern junior title (on his first try) and placed third in the novice men's event at the U.S. Championships. In 1942, he held on to a strong lead after the school figures to best Marcus Nelson of Oakland, California and win the U.S. novice men's title at the age of eighteen.

Al Richards and Edith Whetstone, Walter Noffke and Doris Schubach, Jane Vaughn Sullivan, Walter Sahlin, Bobby Specht, Dorothy Goos, Dick More and Mabel MacPherson at the 1942 U.S. Championships. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.

Dick's figure skating career ended due to his military service in the Navy V-5 plan in World War II. After being released as an Ensign to inactive duty in 1946, he briefly entertained a comeback to skating "with dreams of a slot on the Olympic team until I saw Dick Button really unwind one day at the Boston Skating Club, whereupon I decided I could never beat him no matter what."

Dick completed his Bachelor Of Science degree at Harvard University, married a Dutch woman and had three sons, two of them twins. After working for the Durez Division of the Hooker Chemical Corporation, a plastic and chemical concern in North Tonawanda, New York, he was transferred to New England as a sales rep for the company's Resins Division. After over a decade living in Massachusetts, he returned to Buffalo, where he got his M.B.A. at the University of Buffalo. He and his wife got divorced in 1983 and he remarried to a Canadian. In his later years, he served as Chairman of the Friends of School of Architecture at the University of Buffalo and was involved in the restoration of the Frank Lloyd Wright Darwin Martin House. In his spare time, he enjoyed woodworking and model building. He passed away on May 19, 1996 at the age of seventy one.

AUSTIN HOLT

Born March 20, 1926 in Los Angeles, California, George Austin Holt was the son of George Herbert Holt, a Kansas born Baptist minister, and Rose (Edmonds) Holt, who originally hailed from Massachusetts. As a youngster, he lived on Hargrave Street in Inglewood, California, but he later moved to Piedmont Avenue in Berkeley.

Austin had the good fortune of taking to the ice at the St. Moritz Ice Skating Club around the time Maribel Vinson Owen was teaching there and he came out of nowhere to win the 1943 U.S. novice men's title at the age of sixteen. After his win, Maribel told Associated Press reporters, " Imagine! He never had on a skate - literally that - until two years ago November. For a time he skated with groups and had no individual instruction. He's the kind of boy - and a real boy, too - who doesn't need to be told twice. The fact he is majoring in orchestral music has been beneficial, in the development of rhythm. He's... a really good prospect." Like Dick More, military service forced Austin to put his skating career on hold. While serving in the Navy V-12 course at the University of Southern California, he only found time to take to the ice on weekends. Unlike Dick More, Austin came back to the skating world. After his navy stint, he married Anne Fitzhugh Wright in April of 1947... and then returned to competition the following year at the age of twenty.

Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine

Unfortunately, Austin had the terrible timing of competing during the same era as Dick Button, Jimmy Grogan, the Jenkins brothers and Richard Dwyer. He placed off the podium in fourth in the senior men's event at the U.S. Championships for three consecutive years, but managed to place a very respectable seventh and fifth at the 1949 and 1950 World Championships. In fact, at the 1950 World Championships, the Canadian judge had him ahead of Hayes Alan Jenkins and Hellmut Seibt. Cognizant of the fact that defeating Dick Button would be next to impossible, Austin decided to switch to pairs. With wife Anne, he finally managed to win a senior medal at the U.S. Championships in 1951, but placed a dismal eleventh in his only trip to the World Championships as a pairs skater, with ordinals ranging from sixth through last place. After turning professional, Austin became a coach in Berkeley, California and at San Bernadino Valley's Arrowhead Figure Skating Club. He passed away in 2007 in Charleston, South Carolina.

JIM SHORT

Barbara Roles and Jim Short. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.

Sandy-haired, blue-eyed Jim Short of Alhambra, California started skating in 1947 after seeing a professional show. Representing the Los Angeles Figure Skating Club, he won both the figures and free skate on his way to claiming the 1955 U.S. novice men's title. He was seventeen years old at the time, and coached by Nancy Rush. After finishing third in the junior men's event in 1957, he handed Gregory Kelley his first defeat ever on his way to winning the 1958 U.S. junior men's title. That same year, he and Barbara Roles took the silver in Silver Dance. After winning the novice and junior titles, moving up to the senior ranks was the next step for Jim. Fortunately, Deane McMinn stepped in and talked judges into showing up when the test session where he was going to take his seventh and eighth tests was almost cancelled. After a dismal last place showing in the senior men's event at the 1960 U.S. Championships, Jim decided to call it quits and get a job at a high end furniture store. 

David Edwards, Scott Ethan Allen, Monty Hoyt and Jim Short at the 1962 U.S. Championships

After the Sabena Crash, Jim vowed he'd never skate again. After several months, he rethought his decision and felt the USFSA needed him to come back. He began training again, only to be drafted for military service. He got assigned at a missile site in Pasadena but only was able to train for two hours a day. He finished off the podium in fourth in the 1962 U.S. Championships and later told Patricia Shelley Bushman, "I did as well as I could [but] my skating was kind of a shadow of what it had been." After retiring for a second time, Jim became a coach... and regularly placed ads in competition programs that said, "Skate because you love it!"

HARVEY BALCH

Born March 13, 1943 in Los Angeles, California, Harvey Michael Balch was a precocious young skater at the Blade and Edge Club who came out of nowhere to claim the U.S. novice men's title in 1958. Fifteen year old Harvey was the unanimous winner that year, defeating a young Monty Hoyt as well as Bill Hickox, Jr. who perished in the Sabena Crash along with his sister Laurie.

Harvey Balch (front right)

Unfortunately, Harvey was one of those skaters who never quite managed to translate his novice win to success in the junior or senior ranks. After finishing seventh in the junior men's event at Nationals in 1959, he dropped to eighth the following year. Though his poor results were disappointing, they saved him from getting on that ill-fated flight in 1961. He went on to study at the University Of Southern California and become a dentist.

JIMMY DEMOGINES

Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine

Jimmy Demogines hailed from Pacoima, a city in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California. One of his brothers served in the Vietnam War, and both his paternal and maternal grandparents came from Greece. Because of his heritage, he was nicknamed 'Zorba The Greek'. He started roller skating when he was eight, but switched to figure skating when his roller rink was furnished with ice. As a young man, he divided his time between his studies at the Hollywood Professional High School and on-ice sessions at the Los Angeles Figure Skating Club.

Left photo courtesy "Skating" magazine

Jimmy's first big breakthrough was when he pulled up from sixth to first in the intermediate class at the Southwest Pacific Championships in 1968, and his biggest accomplishment was when he unanimously won the 1969 U.S. novice men's title in Seattle. Jimmy and Mahlon Bradley (the silver medallist) were the smallest competitors that year and Jimmy was Frank Carroll's first student to win a national title. After winning the Pacific Coast junior men's title and U.S. junior silver medal in 1970, Jimmy moved up to the senior ranks - and to Colorado Springs to train - and finished an incredible fourth in a field of twelve at Nationals. Unfortunately, over the next few years he dropped down to sixth and then eighth, and his hopes of translating his novice success to a senior medal were never fully realized.

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 the 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.

Peppe In Her Step: The Audrey Peppe Story

The daughter of Frank and Alice (Loughran) Peppe, Audrey Frances Peppe was born October 12, 1917 in New York City. She grew up in Manhattan - and later, Hempstead Town in Nassau - with her younger brothers Kenneth and Allen. Her father was a very successful real estate broker in Washington Square, bringing in sixty five thousand dollars a year during The Great Depression. Her paternal grandparents were Italian immigrants.

Audrey Peppe and Robin Lee in 1931

Brown haired and freckled Audrey was educated at Friends Seminary Day School, the Gardner School For Girls and Long Beach High School. In 1939 she recalled, "I started in ballet dancing when I was four years old. After I had acquired some confidence in that line, and after having heard so much about skating, it was only natural to transfer my affections to the ice." She started skating at the age of six at the Skating Club Of New York and was taught the basics by her aunt Bea Loughran, who would go on to become the only American in history to win three Olympic medals in figure skating. Later, Bea would accompany her to competitions though her primary coach was Willy Böckl.

Appearing in her first club carnival at the age of ten, Audrey was on the ice at six in the morning every day. Her little free time was spent swimming, golfing, playing tennis and attending dance classes. Though European skaters like Sonja Henie, Belita Jepson-Turner and Melitta Brunner complemented their skating with off-ice dance, Audrey was one of the first American skaters of note to do so.

Audrey Peppe with Ollie Haupt Jr. (left) and Robin Lee (right)

Audrey made her national debut in 1930, losing the junior women's title to Dr. Hulda Berger but winning "the hearts of spectators with a remarkable performance" in the free skating. The following year, she won the Skating Club of New York's junior women's 'Class A' competition for the third time, gaining permanent possession of the winner's cup presented by Gertrude Cheever Porter. She also won the Waltz at that event, skating with female partner Nancy Church. In the years that followed, she amassed top six finishes at four U.S. Championships and the 1933 North American Championships.

The judging system in place at the time which placed so much of the emphasis on school figures hurt Audrey greatly, particularly so early in her career. Many of her competitors were excellent at figures and she - suffice it to say - was not. She finished dead last in figures in many of the events she entered but was in the top three in free skating practically every time. She had an Axel and a Lutz in her repertoire and newspapers raved of her "lightning fast" speed. Maribel Vinson Owen recalled her fine crossfoot spin. One account of her performance at the 1934 U.S. Championships from "The Philadelphia Inquirer" raved, "Audrey skated like wildfire and looked like a comet as she spun around on her skates. Her egg shell colored velvet costume blended with crimson accoutrements tended to heighten her daring leaps, jumps and twists." She placed only fourth at that event.

Audrey's first break came in 1936 at the age of eighteen, when she won the bronze medal at the U.S. Championships and earned the right to represent America at the Olympics and World Championships. In Garmisch-Partenkirchen, she placed twelfth but defeated several better known skaters in free skating. In Paris at the Worlds, she placed an unlucky thirteenth.

In 1937, Audrey went to London to train under Howard Nicholson, one-time coach to Sonja Henie. A membership with the National Skating Association allowed her to compete in the European Championships in Prague, where she placed eleventh. At the World Championships in London that followed, she placed dead last despite the Polish judge having her tied for third in the free skate. In both instances, it was again the figures that did her in.

Photos courtesy "Skating" magazine

Perhaps most famously, Audrey ever so narrowly lost the 1938 U.S. women's title to Joan Tozzer. Egbery Cary, Jr., a judge from Philadelphia, placed her third behind Tozzer and Jane Vaughn, sealing her fate at that event. "TIME" magazine recalled, "To the tune of the Hungarian Rhapsody, she delighted the crowd with flaring spins, jumps and dance steps. But Joan Tozzer so impressed the judges with the simplicity and smoothness of her free-skating repertory that they gave her performance almost as many points as Miss Peppe's. When the two-day totals were tallied, Joan Tozzer was awarded the crown by the slim margin of one-tenth of a point." The result really ticked off the 'powers that be' at the Skating Club Of New York, adding fuel to the decades long rivalry between the old Eastern Seaboard clubs - Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Later that year,
Audrey headlined her club's carnival at Madison Square Garden with Felix Kaspar, making history as the first 'leading lady' in the production not shipped over from Europe.

After finishing second to Joan Tozzer again at the 1939 U.S. Championships, Audrey was named to the 1940 Winter Olympic team. When those Games were cancelled in September of that year due to the outbreak of World War II, she decided to call it a day.

Audrey turned professional, signing with the Skating Artists Agency of Chicago and touring with the U.S. with the "Hello America!" European Ice Revue. In 1940, she married David Benner, the assistant manager of the tourist lodge at Sun Valley and became the 'skating instructress in charge of ice revues' at the resort. Sonja Henie's hit film "Sun Valley Serenade" came out in 1941 but it was Audrey - not Sonja - who starred in the first ice summer revues in Sun Valley during the second World War. She also appeared in the second edition of "Stars On Ice" at the Center Theatre at Rockefeller Center in New York, which Sonja produced with Arthur M. Wirtz. Through their mutual work with Howard Nicholson, the two were acquainted and Sonja only had very nice things to say about Audrey in the press.

Audrey Peppe and Oscar L. Richard posing at the Playland rink in Nye, New York. Photo courtesy Westchester County Archives.

In 1944, Audrey divorced her first husband and married Robert Rapée, the son of famed symphonic conductor Ernö Rapée. She returned to New York and taught skating for many years at the Rye Skating Club and Skating Club Of New York. Sadly, she passed away on April 1, 1992 in Flushing, Queens at the age of seventy four. Her only child passed away of multiple sclerosis two months after she did.

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 the 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.

Wading Through The Mail

It's once again time to unpack the mail bag, answer some of your questions and share some of the interesting e-mails and social media messages that have come my way over the last few months. I'm going to try to do this quarterly from now on so things don't pile up. As always, if you have a question you'd like me to tackle or feedback on a blog please reach out via e-mail.

READER QUESTIONS

From Mark (via e-mail): "When were the U.S. Championships first aired on TV?"

A: Great question, Mark! The first U.S. Championships to be televised were the 1961 U.S. Championships at the Broadmoor World Arena in Colorado Springs. Hosted by Dick Button and Bud Palmer, the ABC telecast featured performances by the skaters who tragically went on to perish shortly thereafter in the Sabena Crash. These videos are still floating around today.

By 1961, the Nationals had already been filmed by the USFSA for over a decade. This started in 1949, when the executive committee voted to spend five hundred dollars (no paltry sum in those days!) to film that year's U.S. Championships, which were also in Colorado Springs. The man they hired to get the job done, Howard Craker, went on to do the USFSA's films for several decades. These films were rented out to skating clubs for a nominal fee as a way of raising funds.

From @bmbrman85 (via Twitter): "Why did they stop the North American Championships?"

A: There's a blog in the Skate Guard archive from 2017 that answers that very question.

From Lori (via e-mail): "Today the ladies are the strongest discipline in Russia, but they never used to be. Why do you think that is?"

A: Thanks for the excellent question, Lori! So, if you look back to the eighties there was actually a different Soviet woman on the podium at the World Championships three years in a row - Elena Vodorezova in '83, Anna Kondrashova in '84 and Kira Ivanova in '85. Then there was a decade long lull where there wasn't a Russian woman on the podium at the World Championships. There were definitely a few different factors in that - the fact that a lot of the top Soviet women were better at figures than free skating and figures got eliminated during that decade, the tremendous talent of the other top skaters during that time, training and economic conditions and the fact that many top Soviet female skaters got filtered into pairs and dance. And even though there were some wonderful Russian women in the nineties-early 2000's - Irina Slutskaya, Maria Butyrskaya, Olga Markova, etc. there was another lull after Irina Slutskaya retired. Over the last decade or so, there's obviously been a huge focus on building up Russian women's skating, and whether you like 'what's going on' or not, I think it's important to recognize two things: 1) that in the grand scheme of skating history, this 'stable' of super young Russian women's skating talent is a pretty recent phenomenon and 2) the Russian women of decades past were crazy talented too... even if they weren't bringing home as many medals.

Nam Nguyen at the 2015 Canadian Championships. Photo courtesy Danielle Earl.

From @QuadAxel3Toe (via Twitter): "I have one question if you don't mind. Who are the youngest Canadian National champions in each discipline? I tried to Google this but got an incorrect response. Thank you!"

A: I can't do pairs and dance for you because there are about half a dozen winners I don't have birth dates for, but I went all the way back to 1905 to check ages for you and can give you definite answers for men's and women's. Two men won the Canadian senior men's title at the age of sixteen: Michael Kirby in 1942 and Nam Nguyen in 2015. Nam was almost exactly two months younger than Michael when he won, making him the youngest in history.

Tracey Wainman was just a few months shy of her fourteenth birthday when she won the Canadian senior women's title in Halifax in 1981, making her the youngest in history... but Canada has actually had a handful of skaters who were sixteen or under when they won the title. Barbara Ann Scott was fifteen when she first became Canadian Champion in 1944, and repeat winners Wendy Griner, Karen Magnussen and Cynthia Phaneuf were all fifteen as well when they won their first titles. Constance Wilson, who won a record nine Canadian women's titles in the twenties and thirties, had just celebrated her sixteenth birthday when she won her first title in 1924 and Barbara Gratton, who won in 1953 and 1954, was sixteen when she won her first title also.

POLITICIANS, DIPLOMATS AND SKATING

From Alice (via e-mail): "FYI, The US Presidential retreat, Camp David during the Kennedy administration had an outdoor ice rink on the skeet range.
https://aboutcampdavid.blogspot.com/2012/03/ice-skating-at-camp-david.html

And, former US Secretary of Skate, Condi Rice was a competitive pairs figure skater when she was growing up in Denver, Colorado. A link with a photo of her skating and lots of details of her roll to end the Cold War.  She was recently named the head of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
https://erenow.net/biographies/condi-the-condoleezza-rice-story/8.php."

BELITA JEPSON-TURNER

From Vincent (via e-mail): "Thank you so much for the wonderful informative biography of Belita. I am not a skater, and until discovering her wonderful performances in Suspense held no interest in skating. Belita's performances changed that. I really feel the need to write just to thank you for being able to fill in the many gaps surrounding the great lady's life. One small thing that I should also love to add that you might want to include footage and a brief descriptive of her wonderful performance to the song Cabildo (Miguelito Valdes with both orchestras Casino de la Playa And Machito and his Afro Cubans as well as the Suspense soundtrack version), In fact it was whilst searching for performance footage of Miguelito that I first discovered Belita and promptly became a fan. To further tell the truth, when reading your wonderful article I was rather hoping to stumble on some juicy snippet of gossip between Belita and Miguelito during filming ... hahaha .. but you can’t have  everything can you? Anyhow really. It’s great the work you undertook and I can only thank you once more. I am very happy and must reread the article several times to fully take in the scope and depth of information you cover."

JACKSON HAINES ON INDOOR RINKS

Mrs. Ellen Burka's daughter Astra sent me this fascinating clipping from the "Toronto Globe", dated March 24, 1863 and signed Jackson Haines, 'Prof. Of Skating'. I'll save your eyes the trouble and reprint his letter to the editor:

"Before leaving you beautiful city, I have thought that it would be nothing less than my duty to give your citizens my experience with regard to the manner of keeping their skating 'rinks' or ponds, in the most healthy and beneficial condition. I have no doubt that skating will be the rage next winter to a greater extent than it has been this.

I have been told that the proprietors of some of the ponds intend covering them, to avoid the effects of the sun and the... snow. This will be found very injurious to health, particularly of children, whose lungs are more active and require more ventilation and fresh air than adults. The experiment has been tried in New York and abandoned. The ice on an open rink, when exposed to all the effects of nature, is found to be much more pleasant to skate upon, and no matter how well the house may be ventilated a certain degree of dampness will be retained under the cover, that has been found exceedingly injurious to persons of tender years. Skating is a violent exercise, and a person when under such excitement needs all the pure, healthful air that it is possible to have. Hoping that this may not be unacceptable to your readers. I remain the well wisher of Toronto."

A CUP OF HISTORY

From Kenny (via e-mail): "I have had the attached (pics) in my possession for 2 years now. It is a 'Tudric' pewter Tankard made by Liberty. I often buy these things in passing and try to track down those to whom they may mean more. I am looking to pass it on to someone who may want to make an offer for it - someone for whom it means a lot. It is engraved GM Hogg, 1937... I currently have 2 military ones also - it is a hobby of mine. I am a career nurse. Whilst I am selling it, the history and proper ownership outweighs monetary value. I hope you can help."

If anyone is interested in purchasing this tankard that once belonged to Miss Gladys Hogg, please e-mail me and I will pass on your message to Kenny.

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 the 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.