ALBRIGHT, Tenley Emma

(b. 18 July 1935 in Boston, Massachusetts), figure skater and surgeon who was the first American woman figure skater to win the World Championship and a gold medal in the Olympics.

Albright, the daughter of Hollis L. Albright, a general surgeon and teacher, and Elin M. Peterson Albright, a homemaker, grew up in Newton Centre, Massachusetts. Her only brother, Niles Albright, also became a champion skater and a surgeon. When she was eight, Albright attended an ice show. Enthralled by the performance of Gretchen Merrill, a former national figure skating champion, Albright asked her parents for a pair of ice skates. She got the skates that Christmas, but they were the tubular type, fine for ice hockey but not for figure skating. Albright skated on a flooded rink in the backyard. Her next pair of skates had the proper notched blades, and at age nine she began taking lessons at the Skating Club of Boston. There she attracted the attention of Maribel Vinson (married name Owen), a nine-time U.S. champion and a noted coach. Vinson saw that Albright had promise but, like many young skaters, had no desire to practice the basic figures and was chiefly interested in free skating. Albright loved to spin and jump to music, but Vinson stressed the importance of mastering the compulsory figures since they counted more in competitive skating. Characteristic of Albright's need for perfection, she began to practice the figures, finding their precision fascinating.

In September 1946 Albright contracted polio. At first it was uncertain whether or not she would walk again, but fortunately the disease was the nonparalytic type. After three weeks in the hospital, Albright emerged with weakened muscles in her lower back. The doctors recommended she return to skating to strengthen the muscles and told her parents that other children would not be allowed to play with Albright because of their parents' fears of the disease. Skating was something she could do alone and was an activity she enjoyed before she was stricken with the disease. Skating Club instructor Willie Frick remarked on Albright's determination, "She'd fall, get up and go right on." In a 1991 interview Albright remarked, "If you don't fall down, you aren't trying hard enough."

In early 1947 Albright decided she wanted to travel to Philadelphia to watch the Eastern Figure Skating Championships. Vinson, who had become her coach, stated that if she went it would be as a competitor. At Philadelphia, Albright won her first title, for juveniles under twelve. She won the national novice title in 1949, then the national junior championship in 1950. In 1952, at age sixteen, she won the first of her five consecutive U.S. Women's Singles titles and a silver medal at the Winter Olympics in Oslo, Norway.

Such accomplishments came with effort. Albright had two dreams, to be a champion figure skater and to become a doctor. Aware of the importance of study and discipline to make the most of her time, Albright practiced four hours a day, two hours on compulsory figures and two hours for free skating. A student at Manter Hall in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she regularly practiced early, from four to six in the morning, at the Boston Arena. During the summers she traveled to Lake Placid, New York; Denver, Colorado; and places in California, anywhere with an indoor rink.

Her silver medal at Oslo in February 1952 was unexpected. No American woman figure skater had placed higher than second since Beatrix Loughran did so in 1924. After the compulsory figures, Albright was second. Her difficult free skating program included three splits in a row and a double flip. Following the Olympics, she worked on her free skating for six weeks under the direction of Gene Turner, a Chicago professional. A year later, on 13 February 1953, she skated a nearly perfect performance to win America's first Women's World Figure Skating Championship at Davos, Switzerland. Skating at an altitude of 4,500 feet in subzero cold that caused some skaters to faint, her free skating program included double axels, double loops, and double solchows. At age seventeen Albright was the youngest woman to win the Worlds to that date. Following this victory she won the North American Championship and a second national title. Albright was the first American to accomplish this feat: the triple crown of skating.

In the fall of 1953 Albright entered Radcliffe College on her way to becoming a doctor. She continued skating practices from four to six in the morning, attended classes, took ballet lessons, and studied. Early in 1954 she returned to Oslo to defend her World Championship, but she fell attempting a difficult double loop jump and placed second. In 1955 she regained the championship in Vienna, Austria, giving a flawless performance. Her next goal was the Olympics.

While Albright was training in Cortina D'Ampezzo, Italy, on 19 January 1956, her skate caught in a rut in the ice, and she fell. The blade of the right skate tore through the boot of her left skate, cutting deeply into her ankle. She could hardly walk. Her father flew to Italy to make some emergency repairs, but Albright could not practice her jumps. No one knew about her injury except her coach and her teammates, and she was not able to practice her full free skating routine until the morning of the competition. During the competition, as her music, "Barcarolle" from Jacques Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffman, began, the audience started humming and singing along. Albright later told reporters, "It made me forget my injury." She skated a nearly perfect program, receiving a number of 5.8s out of a perfect 6, and won her gold medal on 2 February 1956, the first American woman to do so in figure skating.

Albright traveled to Garmisch, Germany, for the World Championship, but the injury to her ankle hampered her skating. She lost to Carol Heiss of the United States. Albright retired from competition and focused on her other goal, becoming a doctor. After only three years of study, she graduated from Radcliffe in 1957 and that year entered Harvard Medical School, one of 6 women in a class of 130. Albright received her M.D. in 1961 and continued to study in residency programs, specializing in surgery. On 31 December 1962 she married Tudor Gardiner, a lawyer. They had three daughters before they divorced in 1976. On 1 December 1981 Albright married real estate developer Gerald W. Blakeley. As of 1999 she resided in Brookline, Massachusetts.

In addition to her medical practice, Albright has devoted time to sports medicine and skating, participating in skating exhibitions to raise money for skating and skaters. She has supported the Figure Skating Association Memorial Fund, established to honor the victims of an air crash in 1961 that killed eighteen members of the U.S. national skating team. Vinson, Albright's former coach, was one of the victims. A member of the Sports Medicine Committee of the U.S. Olympic Committee, she in 1979 became the first woman officer of the U.S. Olympic Committee. She was named to the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Olympic Hall of Fame in 1988.

As a skater Albright's great strength was her ability to blend her aesthetic and athletic skills. Her studied precision in the compulsory figures gave her an advantage, but her innovative free skating and her soaring jumps made her a champion. Albright's success initiated the emergence of U.S. women as major powers in international figure skating competitions.

Essays on Albright are Larry Bortstein, After Olympic Glory: The Lives of Ten Outstanding Medalists (1978), and Janet Woolum, Outstanding Women Athletes: Who They Are and How They Influenced Sports in America (1998). Periodical articles include "Formula for Titles," Newsweek (6 Apr. 1953), which focuses on the world championship at Davos; and "Olympic Bulletin," Boston Globe (2 Feb. 1956), front page coverage of her victory at Cortina. Articles by her father and her coach that provide additional insight are Hollis Albright, "Tenley Almost Misses Shot at Olympic Title," Boston Globe (3 Feb. 1956); and Maribel Vinson, "Tenley Couldn't 'Feel' Ice in Triumphant Windup," Boston Globe (3 Feb. 1956). Albright's life after the Olympics is described in Barbara La Fontaine, "There Is a Doctor on the Ice," Sports Illustrated (8 Feb. 1967). See also W. Bingham, "Guts and Gold," Sports Illustrated (19 Oct. 1987); and Barbara Matson, "Albright Was First, Foremost," Boston Globe (25 Sept. 1999).

Marcia B. Dinneen