Carol Heiss
Carol Heiss Jenkins | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Country represented | United States | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Born | January 20, 1940 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Former coach | Pierre Brunet | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Skating club | SC of New York | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Retired | 1960 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Olympic medal record | ||
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Women's figure skating | ||
Representing United States | ||
1960 Squaw Valley | Singles | |
1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo | Singles |
Carol Elizabeth Heiss Jenkins (born January 20, 1940 in New York City) is an American figure skater and former actress. She is the 1960 Olympic Champion in Ladies Singles, 1956 Olympic silver medalist and five-time World Champion (1956–1960).
Contents
Biography
Heiss grew up in the Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens, New York, where she started skating at the age of 6.[1] She was coached by Pierre Brunet. Heiss first came to national prominence in 1951, when she was U.S. Novice Ladies' Champion at age 11. She won the U.S. Junior Ladies title in 1952, and then moved up to the senior level in 1953. From 1953 to 1956, she finished second to Tenley Albright at the national championships.
Heiss's 1956 performance qualified her for the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. She won the silver medal, while Albright took the gold. However, at the following World Figure Skating Championships at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany, Heiss defeated Albright for the title; it was the first of her five consecutive world titles. During her run of world titles, she also attended New York University, graduating after the 1960 Winter Olympics.[2]
After the 1956 Winter Olympics, Heiss had offers to turn professional and skate in ice shows. But her mother, Marie Heiss, was quite ill with cancer at the time, and before her death in October, 1956, she asked Carol to stay an amateur to win a gold medal for her. Between 1957 and 1960, Carol Heiss dominated women's figure skating like nobody since Sonja Henie. She was the World and U.S. Champion each year, and at the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California, Heiss captured the gold medal, being ranked first by all nine judges. She also took the Olympic Oath as representative of the organizing country to open the 1960 games. By winning the 1960 World Championships held after the Olympics, Heiss became one of three women to have won five consecutive World Championships. She retired thereafter.
Following her retirement from figure skating in 1960, Heiss played the female lead in the 1961 film Snow White and the Three Stooges. She married Hayes Alan Jenkins, who had won the 1956 Winter Olympic gold medal in men's figure skating, and whose brother David Jenkins had won the men's figure skating gold medal in 1960. Although Heiss briefly skated in ice shows after the Squaw Valley Winter Olympics, she retired from the sport in 1962. However, in the late 1970s, she returned to coach several skaters in her hometown area, Akron, Ohio where she became a prominent figure skating coach and is now coaching in Lakewood, Ohio. Some of her students include Timothy Goebel, Tonia Kwiatkowski and Miki Ando.
Heiss was known as a very athletic skater for her time. In 1953, she became the first female skater to land a double axel jump. Another one of her trademarks was doing a series of alternating clockwise and counterclockwise single axels.[3] Heiss normally rotated her jumps clockwise and spins counterclockwise; it is much more common for skaters to do both in the same direction (usually counterclockwise).
Carol Heiss's younger sister and brother, Nancy Heiss and Bruce Heiss, were also elite figure skating competitors. During the 1950s, the three skating Heiss siblings were featured in publications such as Life magazine.[4]
Results
Event | 1953 | 1954 | 1955 | 1956 | 1957 | 1958 | 1959 | 1960 |
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Winter Olympics | 2nd | 1st | ||||||
World Championships | 4th | 2nd | 1st | 1st | 1st | 1st | 1st | |
North American Championships | 2nd | 2nd | 1st | 1st | ||||
U.S. Championships | 2nd | 2nd | 2nd | 2nd | 1st | 1st | 1st | 1st |
References
- ↑ "CAROL HEISS GAINS 3D WORLD CROWN IN FIGURE SKATING; Ozone Park Girl Adds to Her Compulsory Phase Lead in Free-Style Exhibition", The New York Times, February 16, 1958. Accessed November 11, 2007. "Carol Heiss of Ozone Park, Queens, Miss Personality of the ice, skated off with her third world figure skating championship tonight with a perfectly-executed freestyle exhibition."
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ "The United States Championships", Skating magazine, March 1960
- ↑ Heiss sibling photos
- Past U.S. Champions – Senior PDF (123 KiB)
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Carol Heiss. |
- IOC 1960 Winter Olympics
- Carol Heiss Jenkins' U.S. Olympic Team bio
- olympic.org Athlete Profile – Heiss
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- 1940 births
- Living people
- Sportspeople from Queens, New York
- American female single skaters
- American figure skating coaches
- Olympic figure skaters of the United States
- Figure skaters at the 1956 Winter Olympics
- Figure skaters at the 1960 Winter Olympics
- Olympic gold medalists for the United States
- Olympic silver medalists for the United States
- People from Akron, Ohio
- Olympic medalists in figure skating
- World Figure Skating Championships medalists
- World Figure Skating Hall of Fame inductees
- Medalists at the 1956 Winter Olympics
- Medalists at the 1960 Winter Olympics