“I remember clearly that first time,” she
said. “I was in a dark corner going hand over hand along the barrier just to be on the ice.” Soon after, her illness was just an unpleas-
ant memory and she started taking lessons from Willie Frick, an Austrian skating coach. He didn’t teach during the summer, so she was able to keep him as her “home” coach and work with other coaches as well. Te legendary Maribel Vinson Owen was one of them. “She had taken lessons from Willie Frick,
too,” Albright said. “She was just a remarkable person — very bright and enthusiastic. She stood for diversity before people were recogniz- ing that. Maribel was with me at the Cortina Olympics. Willie didn’t go to competitions.” Already the reigning ladies World cham-
pion going into the 1956 Olympic Winter Games in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, Albright had an impressive skating résumé. She had won four U.S. titles, two World crowns, and two North American championships, plus a silver medal at the 1952 Olympic Games in Oslo, Norway. Te gold medal was within her grasp, but an injury almost spoiled everything. “It happened during a practice,” she recalled.
“One of my competitors was having a photo shoot, so I swerved a little and hit a rut in the ice. One foot spiked the other and I couldn’t get up. Cathy Machado [Albright’s teammate] helped me get up and get to the boards. “Te doctor assigned to the skating that
day wanted to cut my boot off, but I said, ‘No, No, No!’ I couldn’t walk for quite a while. My father [a surgeon] came over to Cortina early and he managed to strap my foot in such a way that I could have it in the boot and I could skate.” Back on the ice, Albright fought the odds
the same way she had beaten polio — with de- termination. “Te day of the competition, I thought,
‘OK, I know I can get through my program. I may not be able to get up off the ice when I’m through, but I know I’ll get through it some- how,’” she said. She accomplished more than she expect-
ed. During her Olympic free skate, Albright was surprised by the audience’s reaction.
Albright leaps into the arms of team doctor, Dr. Guiseppe Gasparini, after winning the Olympic title in Cortina.
mate Carol Heiss, left, and Austria’s Ingrid Wendl.
Olympic podium with U.S. team-
Albright, center, shares the 1956
Albright turned in a near-flawless performance in the compulsory figures en route to the Olympic title.
“One exciting thing that happened —
one of many — was in the middle of my program,” Albright remembered. “Te whole audience started humming my music (Tales of Hoffmann by Offenbach). Tat was so moving. Tat wouldn’t happen anyplace but Europe. At first, I thought I was just hearing things.” Albright had made history, becoming the
first U.S. woman to win an Olympic gold medal in figure skating. After returning home, she won another U.S. title in Phila- delphia, then decided to focus on her goal of going to medical school. “I had one more year to go at Rad-
cliffe,” she said. “I asked a neurosurgeon I knew if I had to graduate from col- lege to go to medical school. He told me that no one could find any written requirement, but I had to have my pre- med courses. “I had those, so I applied to Har-
vard Medical School a year early. So, in effect, I’m a college dropout,” she laughed. Te “college dropout” went on to a
distinguished career as a general surgeon and medical researcher. After retiring from medi- cine, she started the MIT Collaborative Initia- tives in 2005. Te objective: to bring people together to solve problems. “I chose people who knew nothing about
the topic, but were experts in their own com- pletely different field,” Albright explained. “So, when we looked at health care, we brought in mathematicians, archi- tects, designers, people who ran oil companies, and people who’d been in the military health system. “It was like an ex-
periment — and it worked. What’s inspir- ing is that we’re always learning. And being a skater helped because it gave me the free- dom to explore.”
SKATING 41
U.S. FIGURE SKATING PHOTO BETTMANN/CONTRIBUTOR
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