Carol Heiss

Infobox Figure skater
title= Carol Heiss


caption=
country= USA
dateofbirth= birth date and age|1940|1|20
formercoach= Pierre Brunet
formerchoreographer=
skating club= SC of New York
retired= 1960

Carol Elizabeth Heiss Jenkins (born January 20, 1940 in New York City) is an American figure skater. She is the 1960 Olympic Champion and 1956 Olympic silver medalist.

Biography

Heiss grew up in the Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens, New York, where she started skating at the age of 6. [ [http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0B1EF63A5D13728DDDAF0994DA405B8889F1D3 "CAROL HEISS GAINS 3D WORLD CROWN IN FIGURE SKATING; Ozone Park Girl Adds to Her Compulsory Phase Lead in Free-Style Exhibition"] , "The New York Times", February 16, 1958. Accessed November 11, 2007. "Carol Heiss of Ozone Park, Queens, Miss Personality of the ice, skated off with her third world figure skating championship tonight with a perfectly-executed freestyle exhibition."] She was coached by Pierre Brunet. Heiss first came to national prominence in 1951, when she was U.S. Novice Ladies' Champion at age 11. She won the U.S. Junior Ladies title in 1952, and then moved up to the senior level in 1953. From 1953 to 1956, she finished second to Tenley Albright at the national championships.

Heiss's 1956 performance qualified her for the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. She won the silver medal, while Albright took the gold. However, at the following World Figure Skating Championships at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany, Heiss defeated Albright for the title; it was the first of her five consecutive world titles. During that time, she attended and graduated from New York University.

After the 1956 Winter Olympics, Heiss had offers to turn professional and skate in ice shows. But her mother, Marie Heiss, was quite ill with cancer at the time, and before her death in October, 1956, she asked Carol to stay an amateur to win a gold medal for her. Between 1957 and 1960, Carol Heiss dominated women's figure skating like nobody since Sonja Henie. She was U.S. and World Champion every year, and at the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California, Heiss captured the gold medal, being ranked first by all nine judges. She also took the Olympic Oath for the 1960 games.

Following her retirement from figure skating in 1960, Heiss played the female lead in the 1961 film "Snow White and the Three Stooges". She married Hayes Alan Jenkins, who had won the 1956 Winter Olympic gold medal in men's figure skating, and whose brother David Jenkins had won the men's figure skating gold medal in 1960. Although Heiss briefly skated in ice shows after the Squaw Valley Winter Olympics, she retired from the sport in 1962. However, in the late 1970s, she returned to coach several skaters in her hometown area, Akron, Ohio where she became a prominent figure skating coach and is now coaching in Lakewood, Ohio. Some of her students include Timothy Goebel, Tonia Kwiatkowski and Miki Ando.

Heiss was known as a very athletic skater for her time. In 1953, she became the first female skater to land a double axel jump. Another one of her trademarks was doing a series of alternating clockwise and counterclockwise single axels. Heiss, incidentally, normally rotated her jumps clockwise and spins counterclockwise; it's much more common for skaters to do both in the same direction, usually counterclockwise.

Competitive highlights

References

* PDFlink| [http://www.xcelenergycenter.com/uploads/assets/saintpaul2008/news/Past%20U.S.%20Champions.pdf Past U.S. Champions - Senior] |123 KiB

External links

* [http://www.olympic.org/uk/games/past/index_uk.asp?OLGT=2&OLGY=1960 IOC 1960 Winter Olympics]
* [http://www.usolympicteam.com/26_13372.htm Carol Heiss Jenkins' U.S. Olympic Team bio]
* [http://www.olympic.org/uk/athletes/heroes/bio_uk.asp?PAR_I_ID=70358 olympic.org] Athlete Profile - Heiss

Persondata
NAME=Heiss, Carol
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Heiss-Jenkins, Carol; Heiss Jenkins, Carol; Heiss Jenkins, Carol Elizabeth
SHORT DESCRIPTION=United States figure skater
DATE OF BIRTH=January 20, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH=New York City
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=