Peggy Fleming - On Television As Performer And Broadcaster

Most Olympic champion figure skaters had previously encountered few career opportunities beyond skating in ice show reviews such as the Ice Capades. Fleming changed that pattern by forging into the realm of network television, beginning with her 1968 special on NBC, Here's Peggy Fleming, which included a guest appearance by Gene Kelley. It was the first of five successful specials that Fleming made for NBC. The series included a 1973 show filmed in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), U.S.S.R., which made it the first American-Soviet joint television production. Fleming also made selected appearances with the touring companies of the Ice Follies and Holiday on Ice programs throughout the 1970s. In 1973 she appeared in her own review, "Peggy's Dinner Theater on Ice," in Lake Tahoe, California; it later toured the country as "Peggy Fleming's Concert on Ice." On January 30, 1977, Fleming gave birth to her first son, Andy. Her second son, Todd, arrived in September 1988.

In 1980 Fleming began appearing as a skating analyst on the ABC network, often teamed with two-time Olympic gold medalist Dick Button. Although the two had different approaches—Fleming's gentle critiques contrasted greatly with Button's sharp on-air personality—the appreciation they both had for skating was obvious. More than twenty years later, both still appear together in ABC's telecasts of national and international skating events. In 1997, while covering the World Championships in Lausanne, Switzerland, Fleming was saddened by the death of her former coach, Carlo Fassi, who was attending the event to supervise his student, American skater Nicole Bobek.