Frozen in Time. Nikki Nichols

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      Stephanie Westerfeld had high championship hopes in 1961.

      She was tiny—weighing only about a hundred pounds—and had a round, cherubic face with glowing pink cheeks and a dimpled chin. Her honey-brown hair was perfectly curled just under her ears, her short bangs drawing attention to her brown, deep-set eyes. She had a high voice—like something that you’d hear from a windup doll—a voice that, from all accounts, was never used to utter an unkind word to anyone. She was the girl in high school who had it all—the looks, the grades, the grace, and the musical and athletic ability. She was quite accomplished, yet modest and never full of herself, instead possessing a kind of angelic quality.

      The only demon she displayed was the one she’d unleash on herself. Steffi was, most of all, a perfectionist. Second place was considered failure in her eyes. Any grade lower than an “A” was not acceptable. Falling in a competition was cause for personal punishment. While skating gave her great joy, it could, in its frustrating moments, be her undoing. Perfection was the only key to Steffi’s happiness. Until she could attain it, she would not relax.

      Though friends called her an introvert, Steffi was becoming accustomed to star treatment. The local papers had written many stories about her successes on the ice. After a time, the papers stopped using her last name altogether, just calling her “Steffi.” This attention may well have caused some students who attended Cheyenne Mountain High School to resent her. The school contained a wide-ranging mélange of economic and social classes—a real mix of the “haves” and “have-nots.” Many of the students there skated at the Broadmoor Ice Palace—and because skating was so expensive, this gave the impression that the skaters were of the wealthier set. Many military families populated Colorado Springs, and some of the military children often felt like economic and social outcasts. Steffi never bought into the class system. Her focus on achieving her best in skating and all endeavors made it impossible to get caught up in the usual high school drama. She didn’t have time for it.

      Steffi’s delicate persona concealed a desire that burned hot within her—a desire to pursue the Olympic dream. Steffi’s dynamic mother, Myra, helped keep those dreams alive through her devotion to the sport and its role in her daughters’ lives. Like Maribel, Myra’s very existence revolved around her two daughters and their various skating pursuits. Steffi’s older sister, Sharon, eight years Steffi’s senior, had also pursued the Olympic dream, and fell short. Steffi had become a stronger skater than her sister, but in her previous attempts at achieving her dream, she had fallen short too, and Laurence was the cause.

      Before the 1961 Nationals, Steffi and Laurence had met in competition only one other time, and that was in 1960. Since Steffi lived in Colorado Springs and Laurence in Boston, they were never in the same competitive region—meaning they wouldn’t have met in the sectional and regional competitions that qualified skaters to Nationals. Steffi and Laurence both advanced from their sectional meets to qualify for the 1960 U.S. Nationals. The top two American women seemed obvious—Carol Heiss and Barbara Roles. Carol was the reigning world champion, and Barbara had placed fifth in the world in 1959. With Heiss and Roles sure to win gold and silver, the bronze medal was the most coveted piece of hardware available to the lesser-known skaters.

      Winning bronze put the world on notice about America’s future in the sport. It would also earn the winner a trip to the 1960 Squaw Valley Olympics. Laurence and Steffi emerged as bronze medal front-runners. One of them would inevitably go home in a placement worse than dead last—fourth. In today’s glamorous world of figure skating, even a fourth-place finisher in a deep field of talent can be asked to tour and even can become quite wealthy as a skater. These rare moneymaking opportunities were forbidden to skaters in 1960. Fourth place most assuredly equaled anonymity.

      Laurence’s mother drew attention to the strictness of the amateur rules in one of her three instructional skating books. In The Fun of Figure Skating, published in 1960, she is careful to mention in the opening pages that the skaters used to demonstrate technique in photos and illustrations “received no remuneration either directly or indirectly.” In 1960, amateur guidelines had to be strictly followed, or athletes would face expulsion from the sport. There were no big-salary touring contracts, no television specials, no endorsement deals of any kind. The sport could not bring a penny of profit to the athlete, or else amateur status was revoked. One of the American ice dance competitors, Larry Pierce, had been forced to give up his job at the Coliseum ice skating rink in Indianapolis, because even his job resurfacing the ice constituted a violation of the rules.

      Figure skaters were also expected to attend school full time. They did not have the tutors or home-schooling opportunities many sports stars have today. If they hoped to attend a good university, they had to be standout students. There were no figure skating programs at universities, so there were no scholarships connected to the sport.

      In addition to the lack of compensation or rewards, there was a much slimmer chance of actually succeeding in a sport such as figure skating. Skating at the Olympics was and is all about the individual or pair. There is really no concept of “team,” the way there is in soccer or basketball, in which a dozen players make up an Olympic or World delegation. Even Maribel Vinson Owen acknowledged the sacrifice and its frequent failure to bear fruit. “You could spend a decade on skating and only end up with heartbreak,” she once told a student.

      So why endure the sacrifices, the hardships, the long training hours, and the time away from family and friends? It’s the athlete’s creed to believe that one day the efforts will pay off. There is no room for self-doubt. There is no room to believe that fourth place is the best result possible. At the 1960 U.S. National Championships, only three young ladies could stand on the podium. Only three could go to the Olympics. If Heiss and Roles performed as expected, even if Laurence or Steffi did well, one would have to go home.

      In the ladies’ and men’s competitions, the judges awarded points in two segments: the compulsory figures—the esoteric pattern work carved into the ice—and the long program, also known as the free skate. In the latter segment, skaters chose their own music, as they do today, and performed the most visually appealing part of skating—the jumping, spinning, and choreography—in programs that last more than four exhausting minutes.

      Compulsory figures, from which the name “figure skating” derives, were worth two-thirds of the overall score. Each move was based on the famous “figure eight” maneuver, in which an actual number “8” could be seen traced into the ice. Also called “school figures,” there were many variations on this shape, some of which resembled snowflakes and stars. Each variation required a mastery of “edging.” Each skate blade contains two edges—the inside and outside edge. Edges produce speed, power, and traction. A trained figure skater can look at the ice after СКАЧАТЬ