Frozen in Time. Nikki Nichols
the fact that the village was going broke getting ready for the Games—so broke, in fact, that the president of the Olympic organizing committee, Dr. Godfrey Dewey, donated land owned by his family to be used for construction of a bobsleigh run.
Just three years into the Great Depression, it hardly seemed logical to be spending bundles of money on an athletic competition. The soup kitchen lines and abandoned lumber mills in nearby towns were not far from the Olympic venues. Because cities had placed bids for the Games well before the economic catastrophe, there was no turning back. The Olympic Games, in their short modern history, had already amassed a great deal of respect and prestige among all nations who participated, and brought about a goodwill among nations for which there was no price tag.
Europeans, especially those from the Nordic countries, dominated winter sports in the early twentieth century, but that did not assure that all the most competitive athletes would come to Lake Placid. Traveling from Europe to the States was difficult and expensive. Commercial aviation wasn’t yet commonplace, and tickets on an ocean liner were costly. For these reasons, an almost embarrassingly tiny delegation from across the Atlantic even bothered to show up. Two hundred fifty-two athletes from seventeen countries were present, most from the United States or Canada. Only twenty-one of the competitors were women, and fifteen of those women were figure skaters. This unbalanced ratio was a testament to the social status of women—whose more accepted place was at home raising children, rather than bouncing around on a sports field in front of audiences.
Aside from the abysmal attendance numbers, unseasonably warm weather for a February in the Adirondacks delayed many of the events. Some of the events didn’t even wrap up until days after the closing ceremonies. Because of the melted mountainside mess, snow had to be shipped from Europe and Canada to assure the downhill skiing events could go on as planned. By the time the competitors reached the bottom of the hill, their skis splashed down in puddles of slush. This emergency snow import also added to the already bursting budget of these Games.
Though a disaster on many important levels, the Lake Placid Games were also triumphant and majestic for many a participant and fan. The governor of New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, kicked off the opening day celebration with a resounding welcome to competitors from all nations. First Lady Eleanor became part of the Olympic spectacle by rolling up her petticoat and charging down the bobsleigh course for a pre-competition test run. She emerged without injury, if a bit queasy.
American Eddie Eagan dazzled crowds while winning his second gold medal in the four-man bobsleigh event. His first gold medal came at the summer Olympics in 1920, in boxing. He remains the only person ever to win gold medals in both a summer and winter Olympics.
The competitors in the figure skating and hockey events enjoyed a treat that was somewhat rare on the international competitive circuit—they would skate at an indoor facility, a huge brick field house built especially for the Olympics. Its new ice surface sparkled like diamonds. It was so perfect and lovely that one could almost feel a kind of guilt about disturbing its stillness. Condensation rose from the surface and created a mist that made the skaters appear to be apparitions floating by in a delicate dance.
As is the case with modern Olympics, the figure skating competition attracted the lion’s share of publicity and interest. The competition in 1932 carried a special fascination. This was the year Norwegian Sonja Henie would compete in her third Olympics—and vie for a second gold medal. Organizers charged admission just to watch the practice sessions, and they brought in standing-room-only crowds.
A frustrated Maribel would have to face Sonja again. She had never beaten Sonja before and knew it was unlikely this time. Maribel’s medal prospects were good. Her gold medal prospects, however, were slim, and she knew it.
“Sonja’s routine is not as hard as mine, but she seldom makes a mistake,” she groused to her coach.
The 1932 U.S. Olympic ladies skating team. Maribel Vinson is seen second from right.
Maribel’s frustration was understandable. While she dominated on U.S. soil in the ladies event, and was a consistent top-three finisher in both pairs and dance, she never became a big name internationally. It seemed that the longer she honed her craft, the more difficult it became to win on the international stage. Following the 1928 season in which she won a silver medal at the World Championships, her career didn’t take off the way she had hoped. Injured in 1929, Maribel wasn’t able to compete at the World Championships to contend for a medal. In 1930, she returned to Worlds and won a bronze. In the next few years, she barely missed the podium. No one could doubt her work ethic, but her nerves seemed to play a role in her downward slide in the rankings. Maribel simply didn’t perform consistently under pressure. Sonja Henie, though, seemed to thrive on pressure. Sonja won the gold at every European and World competition, while Maribel struggled to place in the top five. It seemed that there was no end in sight to Sonja’s dominance.
Many skaters of the television age—Tara Lipinski, Kristi Yamaguchi, Oksana Baiul, and Scott Hamilton—are content to win an Olympic gold medal and move on to the next phase of life, whether it be professional skating, coaching, or the extremely lucrative motivational speaking circuit. Winning one gold medal is good enough for most athletes—the odds against them are incredibly long. Winning two gold medals in figure skating is like scaling Mount Everest—twice.
Sonja, however, wanted to be the center of attention at all times. To have one gold medal in her coffers wasn’t enough. She wanted a score of punctuation marks added to her dominance. The outside world knew her as gentle, caring, and compassionate, but her fellow competitors knew her dimpled smile concealed a bossy, diva-like temperament, and a cutthroat approach to any competitive situation.
Sonja, the darling curly blonde with unquestionable cuteness, started showing promise as a figure skater at a very early age. Her wealthy parents, especially her over-attentive father, indulged her every whim, often at the expense of her siblings, who received much less attention from their father. She even had her own private pond on which to practice. She took ballet lessons from some of the most respected prima ballerinas available to teach.
Sonja won her first Norwegian national championship at age eleven. Because no age requirement had been established for Olympic competition, in 1924, Sonja was already heading to her first Olympics. While competing, she stopped her program repeatedly, skated to the edge of the lake, and asked her coach what she should do next. The audience was overwhelmed by her charm, but the judges ranked her dead last out of only thirteen total competitors. There the flame was fully ignited.
Maribel Vinson performs in the Olympics.
While other skaters in that 1924 Olympics were wearing skirts that touched their ankles, Sonja was dressed as a little girl was expected to dress—in a pleated white skirt that stopped just above the knees. She was the picture of innocence. In addition to deciding she would win her next Olympics, she had also decided never to wear a full-length skirt while skating. With her shorter, children’s skirts, she discovered she had more freedom of movement. She also decided she liked the white skating boots much better than the black boots that were customary for skaters of both genders. Already, Sonja was a trailblazer and a trendsetter.
Figure skating was not always about the grace and athleticism that Sonja and Maribel espoused. In fact, skating was not conceived as a sport at all; it was designed to be a mode of transportation. The early fishermen and hunters of northern Europe strapped animal bones, antlers, and wood onto their feet to glide across frozen lakes, a practice dating back to 300 A.D. In 1572, skates found their way onto the battlefield. Spain occupied the Netherlands, but the Dutch began their revolt when Spanish rulers would not tolerate the Reformation’s spread into Holland. In the Battle of Ijsselmeer, the Dutch surprised the more powerful Spaniards by skating the frozen canals for combat. When the Spaniards attempted to use skates in the next round of battle, they fell all over themselves. Spain eventually lost the war. One could say then that skating played a role, albeit small, in the spread of Protestantism in Europe.
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