Peggy Fleming Biography - Showed Early Promise, Chronology, Thrown Into Spotlight, Awards And Accomplishments, The Long Program: Skating Toward Life's Victories - SELECTED WRITINGS BY FLEMING:
sports star figure championship world national
1948-
American figure skater
Peggy Fleming
One of the most influential female athletes of the past century, Peggy Fleming combined grace and power to create some of the most memorable figure-skating programs of her era. After winning a surprising victory at the 1964 United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA) National Championship as a fifteen-year-old, Fleming went on to capture four more consecutive national titles. She also added three International Skating Union (ISU) World Championship titles from 1965 to 1968 to her list of accomplishments. At the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France, Fleming became the only American athlete to win a gold medal at the games. Retiring from the amateur ranks after winning her third World Championship later that year, Fleming went on to star in a number of figure skating television specials and appeared with various touring ice shows in the 1970s. Her work as a skating analyst for the ABC network kept her in the public eye in the 1980s and 1990s. After a diagnosis of breast cancer in 1998, Fleming also campaigned to raise awareness of the importance of early detection and treatment for the disease. Married to dermatologist Greg Jenkins since 1970 and the mother two sons, Fleming remains one of the most admired figures in the world of sports.
SELECTED WRITINGS BY FLEMING:
(With Peter Kaminsky) The Long Program: Skating Toward Life's Victories. New York: Pocket Books, 1999.
Additional Topics
Peggy Gale Jenkins was born on July 27, 1948 in San Jose, California. She was the second of Albert and Doris (Deal) Fleming's four daughters. For the first several years of her life the Flemings lived in the San Jose area, where Al Fleming had a job as a newspaper press operator for the San Jose Mercury News. Fleming started skating at age nine and found it to be a good outlet for her natur…
Under her mother's watchful eye, Fleming had made a spectacular rise in the figure-skating world and was ranked as the best American skater by the time she was fifteen years old. Part of her rapid rise in the sport was due to the 1961 airplane crash in Brussels, Belgium, that had claimed the lives of almost the entire U.S. figure skating delegation, which was on its way to that year'…
I was proud to be on the [1964 Winter Olympic] team, but I hated the Olympic uniforms. Even then, fashion was becoming an important part ofthe total package. How you looked said a lot about your style, and yourstyle was what made your skating different and special. Those tight skipants and geeky wool jackets with red and blue stripes on the collar werenot my style. Still, when all the American tea…
Having won consecutive World Championships in 1966 and 1967 and U.S. National Championships from 1964 to 1967, Fleming entered the 1968 season as the favorite for the Olympic gold medal. Her competitive season got off to a remarkable start at the 1968 U.S. Nationals in Philadelphia, where Fleming's free skate ranked among the best-ever performances in women's figure skating up to tha…
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 Flem…
At the U.S. Nationals in Philadelphia in January 1998, Fleming discovered a lump in her left breast. Although she continued to work through the next few weeks, a biopsy showed that the lump was malignant. Undergoing surgery to remove the cancer on February 10—exactly thirty years after she had won her gold medal in Grenoble—Fleming later underwent radiation therapy and made a speedy …
The mother of two sons, Andy and Todd, Fleming makes her home inthe San Jose suburb of Los Gatos with her husband, Dr. Greg Jenkins. Inearly 1998, after noticing a lump in her left breast, Fleming confronted a di-agnosis of breast cancer that required surgery. The procedure was per-formed in February 1998; after undergoing radiation therapy, Fleming madea full recovery. "I have no explanati…
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