Figure Skating: Delicacy at Davos

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The news that flashed from Belgium on Feb. 15, 1961, was tragic: "A Sabena Airlines Boeing 707 crashed near the Brussels Airport early today, killing 73 persons, including the 18 members of the United States figure-skating team." The news from Davos, Switzerland, last week still echoed that grim day. Scotty Allen, the U.S.'s No. 1 male skater, finished fourth at the 1966 world championships. The top American pair wound up third, the best U.S. dance team placed second behind a couple of Britons. Bad news indeed for a nation that had won 21 world figure-skating championships in 13 years before the 1961 crash — and not a single one since.

One U.S. skater was still waiting her turn: Peggy Fleming, 17, a diminutive (5 ft. 4 in., 108 lbs.) high school senior from Colorado Springs. Shy and a homebody, daughter of an itinerant newspaper pressman, Peggy did not even learn to skate until she was nine. When she won her first (of three) U.S. championship in 1964, experts were as impressed by her girlish grace and pleasant looks as by her acrobatics and technique. "Peggy is not a fiery skater," said Dick Button. "She is a delicate lady on the ice." And at Davos, it figured to take more than delicacy to surpass Canada's defending champion Petra Burka. Only four times in the 60-year history of the event had a defender failed to repeat. "Petra should do it again," Button predicted, "although Peggy could be her closest challenger."

School Is a Ritual. In the past, Peggy's main weakness had been her tracing of the compulsory, or "school," figures, a repetitive series of "paragraphs," "rockers" and "counters" that comprises 60% of a figure skater's score (v. 40% for free skating). Davos' 5,500-seat stadium was virtually empty last week as the skaters went through the exacting ritual, tracing and retracing each figure while judges got down on their hands and knees to search for the slightest bulge in a circle or the telltale double line that proved a competitor had used (heaven forbid!) the flat of her skate. "It takes very hard work to get the school figures perfect," sighed Peggy; her practice schedule for almost a year had consisted of five-hour workouts six days a week. It all seemed worthwhile when the judges added up their scores: at the end of the compulsory figures, Peggy was leading Petra Burka by a fat 48 points.

"That's it!" exulted a U.S. team official. "Unless Peggy falls flat on the ice she's got it in the bag." Falling was more than a remote possibility, because Peggy's free-skating routine included the usual spins and splits—plus such exacting specialties as a "half one-and-a-half double cherry flip combination" and a "spread eagle—double axel-spread eagle."