Fifty years later, gold medalist Albright is back on the scene

ST. LOUIS — She doesn't look a day over 50, which made the circumstances — a half-century having passed since she won the first U.S. women's gold medal in figure skating — all the more astonishing to Tenley Albright.

"Fifty years ago? No! It doesn't seem possible when you say it," Albright, 70, said Saturday night during the U.S. Figure Skating Championships at Savvis Center.

One of the highlights for the crowd that night was seeing all 12 U.S. figure-skating gold medalists at center ice — assembled for the first time all in one place. An even greater highlight for journalists, especially Olympic buffs, was sitting down with Albright and fellow gold medalist David Jenkins and listening to the memories flow.

For Albright, who went on to become a distinguished surgeon and cancer researcher in Boston, some of the memories from the 1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo Games — the last Winter Olympics in Italy — are as clear as yesterday.

Cortina in 1956 was a tiny mountain village, completely consumed by the Winter Games. Albright said she'll never forget skating one of her programs — with a badly injured ankle she had sliced to the bone with a skate blade in practice — and hearing the crowd begin humming along to her music at the outdoor ice arena.

"This enormous feeling just sort of welled up in me," she said. "There was the most wonderful feeling of camaraderie. It made me feel like the sport was an international language."

She plans to return to Cortina next month on a trip to see the Games in Turin.

For winter sports, Cortina in many ways was the end of the old, simpler era. The next Winter Games, at Squaw Valley, Calif., in 1960, were the last with outdoor ice rinks — and the first to be televised.

Everything changed after that, from athlete preparation to off-the-ice pressure, said Jenkins, the Squaw Valley gold medalist who had won a bronze in Cortina the same year his brother, Hayes, took the gold.

Skating indoors took natural elements out of the game. And they were a considerable force, Jenkins said. Imagine trying to skate precise compulsory figures outside, where you not only dealt with rough, uneven ice, but wind and, on occasion, even a surface that wasn't level. Natural elements were even trickier for performances, where a skater could jump from solid, firm ice at the beginning and land in soft, mushy, sun-exposed ice.

"It's a wonderful thing to skate outdoors," said Jenkins, who also became a physician and is now retired in Tulsa, Okla. "It's exhilarating to be in a natural setting instead of a damp, dark arena."

Modern skaters also face more intense media scrutiny, although Albright said she and her teammates were hardly flying under the radar of public attention.

"We thought there was plenty at that time," she said. "We did have Movietone News, you know!"

No seat for you

When the music stopped, Kirkland's Jill Bakken was the last driver without a bobsled seat.

Bakken, a Lake Washington High School grad and the defending women's gold medalist, was ranked sixth in the world among bobsled drivers earlier this week. But she's third among U.S. women, and only two drivers get to go to the Turin Olympics.

Named to the Olympic team were the sled pairs of Shauna Rohbock and Valerie Fleming, the top U.S. team in current World Cup standings, and Olympic veterans Jean (Racine) Prahm and Vonetta Flowers. Brakeman Bethany Hart was named as an alternate.

Also missing the squad was former Auburn track standout Amanda Moreley, who had been Bakken's alternating sled partner throughout the current World Cup season. Both Bakken and Moreley will be named as additional alternates should the other athletes be unable to travel or compete.

Bakken, then riding with Flowers, was an upset gold medalist at the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games, upstaging favored driver Racine, whose partner, Gea Johnson, was suffering from a hamstring injury. The victory made Flowers the first black athlete from any nation to capture a Winter Olympic gold medal.

Both U.S. sleds are likely to be among the medal favorites in Turin. Rohbock currently is the world's second-ranked driver; Prahm ranks fifth.

Skating to Spokane

Figure-skating fans won't have to travel all the way to Italy to see America's best competing next year at this time. In fact, they won't even have to leave the state.

The 2007 U.S. Figure Skating championships will be Jan. 21-28 in Spokane, which has been aggressively gearing up for its role as host for several years.

Twin venues for skating's biggest 2007 U.S. event will be the 10,500-seat Spokane Arena and the newly expanded Spokane Convention Center. Event organizers, touting the successful 2002 Skate America in Spokane, are pitching the town and the venues' "smaller and more intimate" setting, promising "the ultimate spectator experience."

People are buying it — fast. Early ticket sales have set records, but tickets are still available. To book your own trip, go to www.spokane2007.com.

The last time Washington state hosted the event, which brings more than 1,500 skaters, coaches and officials — and a predicted $30 million economic boost — along with it, was in Tacoma in 1987. Spokane is hoping to cement its place as a skate mecca by making a bid this spring for the 2009 World Championships. The city is looking for financial help from the state to lure the event.

An "iffy" proposition

Let the lowering of expectations begin.

Now that the U.S. figure-skating team has been named — barring a last-minute exit by Michelle Kwan — at least one skating insider already is saying the Turin squad doesn't measure up to those of recent Olympics past.

How does Frank Carroll, longtime coach of Kwan and current coach of Olympian Evan Lysacek rate the women's team?

"Iffy," Carroll told the San Jose Mercury News when asked about the trio of Kwan, Sasha Cohen and 16-year-old newcomer Kimmie Meissner.

"Michelle is a big question mark," he said. "Kimmie is a junior skater on the senior level for the first time. She hasn't done anything internationally."

That might make Cohen the chief medal hope, Carroll said.

The U.S. entered the previous two Winter Olympics with a gold-medal favorite. In 1998 at Nagano, there was talk of a U.S. sweep of Kwan, Tara Lipinski and Nicole Bobek. Lipinski wound up with gold; Kwan bronze. Four years later in Salt Lake City, the favored Kwan moved up to silver, while Sarah Hughes upheld the U.S. gold standard and Cohen finished fourth.

Irina Slutskaya of Russia is the odds-on favorite for gold in Turin.

Pick several million

The final tally sheet is in: The budget for the Turin Games will be 1.2 billion euros, or about $1.45 billion, organizers have announced.

Much of that, as usual, will be recouped from television revenues. But the organizing committee says it will turn to a lottery to finance some 29 million euros it hoped to receive, but didn't, from the Italian government.

The budget figure doesn't count an additional 1.3 billion euros to refurbish the local stadium and three other arenas.

Avril's Olympic debut

Early avant-garde warning for the closing ceremony. Word leaking from Italy, reported by The Associated Press, is that the confab will include Federico Fellini-inspired clowns, acrobats, high-wire acts, Andrea Bocelli and Avril Lavigne.

That last one is not as much misfit as it sounds: Lavigne is Canadian, and part of the ceremony includes a handoff from Turin to Vancouver, B.C., which will host the 2010 Winter Games.

Ron Judd: 206-464-8280 or rjudd@seattletimes.com