She set the gold standard
50 years after her victory in France, Fleming believes skating is out of balance
Winter Olympics heroes in the United States were few and far between in a world Before Snowboarding, which may explain why viewers of a certain age still regard Peggy Fleming, 50 years after her 1968 ladies figure skating gold medal, among the greatest of U.S. winter athletes.
Fleming, who celebrates her 70th birthday in July, was the only U.S. gold medalist in 1968, returning from Grenoble, France, with one of just eight U.S. medals, three of which came from a second-place tie in a women’s speedskating race.
Her victory was an early feel-good moment in a year that would turn calamitous on many fronts. It will always be a watershed moment in the history of U.S. figure skating, coming only seven years after the entire U.S. team and many of its top coaches were killed in a 1961 plane crash en route to the world championships in Czechoslovakia.
Fleming’s graceful style was formed in large part by her first Olympic Games in 1964, when she finished sixth at age 15, and by her association with coach Carlo Fassi, who took over her training after her first coach, William Kipp, was killed in the 1961 plane crash.
What Fleming described as the “lack of musicality” among several top skaters at the 1964 Games “gave me a perspective of what I needed to find in my own skating,” she said during a recent conference call.
“I thought, ‘Well, I want to do something different,’ and so I went back and started trying to find my style and to find myself,” she said.
After a second national title and a third-place finish at worlds in 1965, she concluded her career on the top step of the podium, winning three more national championships, three world titles and the 1968 gold medal before turning professional, which at the time disqualified her from future Olympic competition.
Fleming competed at the end of an era when compulsory figures counted for 60 percent of the total score. The short program was added for the 1976 Olympics, and compulsory figures endured through 1990.
‘Skating isn’t all about jumps’
Given her personality and the times in which she competed, it’s no surprise that she is not a fan of the more athletic, points-oriented skating style in vogue at the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang.
“Skating, I think, is a little off balance with the jumps and artistry,” she said. “I feel like we have to put more artistry emphasis in the judging, and I think it should be leveled out. It needs to get that balance back.
“Skating isn’t all about jumps. Skating is a beautiful sport, and it is art and it is creative and it is about personality. … Quads and triples are important, but gliding and interpreting music is important, too. It’s the package.”
In that vein, Fleming is very much on the same page with two-time Olympic gold medalist Dick Button, with whom she worked for many years as an analyst for ABC Sports.
“I’m not a happy camper at all,” Button, 88, grumbled recently about the sport’s current state.
Along with television commentary, skating tours and TV skating specials after her competitive career ended, Fleming became active in promoting breast-cancer awareness after she was diagnosed and underwent surgery in 1998. She and her husband, dermatologist Greg Jenkins, whom she met while training in Colorado Springs, Colo., at the Broadmoor resort, and to whom she was married shortly after the Olympics, recently sold their home in California, where they owned a winery. They live in the Denver area.
“It’s been a great journey for both of us, and we have supported each other on very difficult careers and are now in a situation where we have embraced retirement,” she said.
Fleming followed in the footsteps of Olympic champions Tenley Albright and Carol Heiss and was followed by the likes of Dorothy Hamill, Kristi Yamaguchi, Michelle Kwan, Tara Lipinski, Sarah Hughes and Kimmie Meissner as U.S., world or Olympic champions.
U.S. women shut out since 2006
Women’s skating in the U.S., however, is in the midst of a slump as competition begins on Tuesday in Pyeongchang. U.S. women have not medaled at the Olympics since Sasha Cohen’s silver medal in 2006, and only 2016 silver medalist Ashley Wagner has reached the podium at the world championships since Meissner’s 2006 world title.
“It’s just a lull in talent and the consistency and the level of skating that is going on today,” Fleming said. “I hope that women will still participate in figure skating and bring it to another level. Maybe it needs to be somebody who does something really different and challenges the norm and comes out as a real original.”
Figure skating, she said, “is not for everybody, and I’m very grateful for the career I’ve had. I didn’t go out as a young skater thinking I wanted to be in the Olympics and be the best ever. I just wanted to be the best I could be and improve every year.”