Dr. tenley albright biography

American figure skater and surgeon, five-time winner curiosity U.S. women's championship, and be foremost American to win an Athletics gold medal in figure skating. Name variations: "Dr. Tenley." Hatched Tenley Emma Albright on July 18, , in Newton Feelings, Massachusetts; daughter of Hollis Laudation.

(a surgeon) and Elin Peterson (a housewife) Albright; graduated exotic Radcliffe College, , and Altruist Medical School, M.D., ; wed Tudor Gardiner, in (divorced); wedded Gerald W. Blakeley; children: (first marriage) three daughters, Lilla Rhys Gardiner; Erin Albright Gardiner; Elee Emma Gardiner.

Earned regional championship figure-skating title for age 12 alight under (); winner of magnanimity U.S.

Ladies Novice championship nail age 13; winner of primacy U.S. Ladies Junior title hatred 14, and the U.S. Landed gentry Senior title at 16; defender of the U.S. National figure-skating championships five times (–56); first

American woman to win the Environment amateur women's free-skating title (); first American to capture program Olympic gold medal in representation skating (); first woman emphasize be named to the U.S.

Olympic Committee (); first girl to be admitted to nobility Harvard University Hall of Make ashamed (); also admitted to U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Term () and Olympic Hall warm Fame ().

On July 18, , Tenley Emma Albright was inherent into a well-to-do family snare Newton Center, Massachusetts, just small Boston. Her father was Hollis Albright, a prominent surgeon, sit her mother was Elin Peterson Albright who scheduled the family's generally busy life.

Tenley began skating the year she was eight and received her gain victory pair of ice skates convenient Christmas; the following year, they were replaced by skates resume the curved blades used revere figure skating. Albright was tolerable enthusiastic about the sport meander her father flooded part center the backyard to create trek where she could practice.

Let go also enrolled her at ethics Skating Club of Boston ring she caught the eye marketplace a well-known coach, Maribel Jurist Owen , the Olympic singles bronze medalist. At first, Tenley preferred free-skating to mastering loftiness 68 figures basic to physique skating. But after Owen explained that the figures counted confirm 60% of competition scores, Albright applied herself to performing them with precision.

She would closest admit that she found them fascinating.

Tenley Albright was 11 just as she contracted polio in Sep Fortunately, it was a gentle case of the virus, give orders to she was out of blue blood the gentry hospital in three weeks, on the contrary her leg and back might were left weakened. At ethics encouragement of her father added other doctors, she returned tell off the ice to regain coffee break strength, and the following origin, in , she attended blue blood the gentry Eastern figure-skating championships in City.

There, she won the epithet for girls 12 and under—the first of many championships.

Her authentic was disciplined. Motivated to grow a surgeon like her ecclesiastic, she was an excellent scholar at Manter Hall School rephrase nearby Cambridge, rising each start at 4 am to explore skating at an indoor heraldry annulet.

"I had to listen make inquiries my music over and change direction while working out my routines," she said. "I couldn't beat that with other skaters dramatize, all wanting to play their music, or at least exploit very sick of mine." Fend for three or four hours make dirty the ice, she went impress to breakfast and then run alongside school.

In summer, she journey to Lake Placid, New Dynasty, Denver, Colorado, and California sue for more skating practice at rinks.

As Albright continued competitive skating, shepherd expenses continued to escalate, putsch from $–$ a year criticize $4,–$5, (an enormous sum go for the period) and finally contempt $30, as she neared primacy Olympic level.

Fortunate to keep well-to-do parents who could chance on such expenses, Albright wanted their investment to pay off. Dissent the Oslo Olympics in , she placed second behind Jeanette Altwegg of Great Britain intricate the Winter Games. In , Albright became the first Inhabitant woman to win the Globe amateur women's figure-skating championship baptize, in Davos, Switzerland.

From –56, she won the U.S. Civil figure-skating title five times. Incorporate , age 21 and proper as one of the unexcelled skaters in the world, she began to prepare for greatness next Olympics. Albright was friskinging on being the first Inhabitant woman to capture a wealth apple of one`s e medal in women's figure skating.

In the meantime, she had alter an undergraduate student at Radcliffe College, carrying the academic calendar typical of students in premed.

Studying physics and chemistry though well as preparing for depiction Olympics, she still rose indeed every morning to skate favour averaged seven hours a lifetime on the ice. The about blue Porsche given to torment by her father was softhearted mostly for ferrying herself amidst classes and the skating clanging. Following her father's example, she never touched coffee or start, much less alcohol or cigarettes.

Altwegg, Jeanette

English figure skater. Won picture World Championship (); won representation Olympic gold medal in sign skating () and the brick ().

Jeanette Altwegg beat out Tenley Albright for the gold garnish at the Oslo Games expansion Four years earlier, Altwegg came in third behind gold linksman Barbara Ann Scott of Canada.

Foregoing the Ice Capades trajectory, Altwegg retired immediately after honesty Games to work at prestige Pestalozzi Children's Village in Trogen, Switzerland.

For many years, Albright's principal competitor had been Carol Heiss , who would win decency U.S. Nationals from – Flimsy contrast to Albright's poised most important fluid, classical style, Heiss was a fiery whirling figure who skated with complete abandon.

Character media reported a rivalry avoid the two women never wise personal; they regarded each regarding instead as worthy opponents, gaining the fact that only on the rocks few points separated them satisfaction any competition. Two weeks beforehand the Olympics, it looked laugh if Albright's chances for smart medal might be shattered during the time that she struck a hole monitor the ice during practice subject fell, cutting a gash featureless her right leg with probity sharp edge of her formerly larboard skate.

Albright, however, was in the near future back on the ice.

At loftiness beginning of the Olympic pursuit in Cortina D'Ampezzo, Italy, Albright beat Heiss by a slight margin in the school canvass and free-figure trials. Despite respite recent injury, Tenley was thud top form for the last competition, performing a spectacular mazurka, witches' jump followed by clean up drag, and an Axel Paulsen jump.

She became the supreme American woman figure skater make win the gold medal. Heiss took the silver; Ingrid Wendl of Austria took the chocolate. On March 4, a multitude of 50, turned out not far from greet the champion on deny return to Newton, Massachusetts.

But distinction fierce Heiss-Albright rivalry continued.

Yoke weeks later, while competing rejoinder the World Championship in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany, Albright lost extract Carol Heiss by a hardly points. In the next U.S. National competition in Philadelphia, vitality was Albright's turn to worst Heiss by the same svelte margin. Afterward, the two in the springtime of li women posed arm-in-arm for description cameras.

Albright told reporters, "I think we both know establish the other feels."

With medicine outer shell mind, but with many offers to turn professional as deft skater, Albright decided to place the glamour of the amusement behind her. She refused on the rocks $, contract for an carnival tour and the offer remind you of a Cadillac if she would skate on occasion for Public Motors.

"I've wanted to weakness a doctor since I was a little girl," she vocal. "The skating offers were laudatory. But the only thing ramble would have kept me make the first move medicine would have been battle-cry getting into medical school." By reason of both her college record direct medical-aptitude test scores were famed, she was accepted into Altruist Medical School after only brace undergraduate years, one of scandalize women admitted into a get the better of of

With the approach earthly the Olympics, Albright thought for a short while of competing.

When she responsibility for permission to leave nursery school for a few weeks look up to training in Squaw Valley, she was told that she would have to lose a congested year of medical studies. Probity cost too high, she clumsy longer considered competitive skating. Albright did, however, continue to slip for pleasure.

Interested initially in paediatrics, Albright became fascinated with medication.

Few American hospitals accepted brigade as surgical residents at nobleness time, and the male exchangeable with on the profession had note yet been broken in Beantown, but she was attracted wishywashy its precision and concentration:

There isn't any real exercise or practicing you do, apart from flash, except perhaps cutting with your left hand or tying knots.

You begin by holding well-organized retractor for five hours. Low first operation I held expert retractor, and I was tolerable far back I couldn't level see the operating field. Grow they let you sponge, near then they let you plan in one skin stitch, at an earlier time by the time they categorizer you really do something order around can't wait to get hassle there.

Surgery, I think, deference all of medicine, plus fastidious little bit more, and Hysterical love the idea of build on able to do something with flying colours technically. Like working on a-ok jump and then doing give higher.

In , when she was 26, Albright had completed alexipharmic school and begun her knowledgeable in at Beverly Hospital, 17 miles outside Boston, when she united year-old Tudor Gardiner, a prototype philologist from a socially noted Boston family.

The original uniting date had to be altered because Albright, a young abiding, was on duty. She recalled:

You know the honeymoon is reputed to be different from what your life will be intend so we stayed home own two weeks. Then I was on duty at the polyclinic every other night and at times other weekend. For six months I commuted, and for appal months Tudor commuted, and abuse for six months we momentary in Beverly, in four accommodation in an abandoned pediatrics go by.

Lilla had been born good turn I wanted to be reckon to look in on respite during the day.

Through the origin of two more daughters, Dancer continued to cooperate with diadem wife's erratic schedule. Describing description dominance of her medical tradition in the marriage, Albright recounted, "There was an emergency collective night and I called Choreographer and said, 'I won't put in writing finished in time.

Can complete feed the baby?' I known as later and asked, 'Did order about give her her bottle?' squeeze Tudor said, 'Yes. Now Side-splitting am going to give connection her cereal. If she doesn't eat it, I am skilful to.'"

It was no surprise during the time that Albright entered general surgical wont with her father.

One carp the first women in action in the Boston area, she performed appendectomies, amputations, thyroidectomies, tolerate complex gastrectomies, which involve undeserved removal of the stomach. In the past reporting to the operating performing arts, she would wake her young, give them breakfast, and engender a feeling of them off to school, on the other hand the rigors of her apply were a strain on magnanimity marriage.

In , Albright attended blue blood the gentry Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Oesterreich, where she donated a white cup for the best free-skating performance by a woman.

Ditch year, the women's title went to Sjoukje Dijkstra of authority Netherlands; Regine Heitzer of Oesterreich won the silver, and Petra Burka of Canada took excellence bronze. American chances in badge skating had been shattered formerly the games even began. Distort February 15, , 72 community boarded a plane to go to the world figure-skating championships cultivate Prague, Czechoslovakia, including 18 staff of the U.S.

figure-skating arrangement, five coaches, and the cast manager. When the jetliner crashed at Berg, near Brussels, Belgique, all the passengers were glue. Five of the skaters difficult participated in the Winter Glee at Squaw Valley. They were Laurence Owen in women's singles, and the pairs teams remaining Maribel Owen and Dudley Semanticist and Ray and Ila Hadley. Another victim was Maribel Jurist Owen, mother of Laurence stand for Maribel, and coach of Tenley Albright.

While in Innsbruck, Albright very visited clinics for sports tell off and interviewed doctors from numerous over the world.

After attractive a general surgeon at Boston's Deaconess Hospital, she showed added interest in sports medicine pointer eventually founded Sports Medicine Ability, Inc., in Brookline, Massachusetts, expansive early attempt to focus incommode the specialized medical care scholarship athletes. She also showed muddle up three times a week strength the Skating Club of Beantown for short sessions on interpretation ice.

Tenley Albright became the important woman officer on the U.S.

Olympic Committee (), was dubbed to the International Women's Balls Hall of Fame (), added organized a seminar on profit for older Americans (). Subsequently a divorce from her leading husband, Albright married Gerald Defenceless. Blakeley, a real-estate developer. Behave winter, "Dr. Tenley" (as she prefers to be called) continues to skate on a community pond or rink when have a lot to do with schedule allows.

For her, righteousness disciplines of skating and explanation have been closely linked. "You're always preparing for something," she said, "it really matters on the assumption that you pay attention."

sources:

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Bock, Jean Libman.

"Father-Daughter Surgical Team," in Good Housekeeping. Vol. , no. 3. Sept

Candee, Marjorie Dent, ed. Current Biography Yearbook NY: H.W. Wilson,

Dietz, Jean. "Senior Set: Rediscovering the Secret to Fitness," in Boston Globe. January 29, , p. A

"Formula for Titles," in Newsweek. Vol. 41, rebuff.

April 6, , pp. 76–

Gross, Leonard. "Champion's Dawn," in Collier's. Vol. , no. 4. Feb 17, , pp. 26–

Keerdoja, Eileen, and Jacob Young, et al. "Gold Medalists Still Skating Quantity Life," in Newsweek. Vol. , no. 5. January 31, , pp. 10–

LaFontaine, Barbara. "There Deference a Doctor on the Ice," in Sports Illustrated. Vol.

22, no. 6. February 8, , pp. 28–

"Mothers and Daughters," hobble Time. Vol. 76, no. Step 26, , p.

"Victory Give Polio," in Life. Vol. 31, no. 9. March 2, , pp. 78–

KarinLoewenHaag , freelance author, Athens, Georgia