Janet lynn figure skater biography

Lynn, Janet (1953—)

American figure skater who won pentad national championships. Born Janet Lynn Nowicki on Apr 6, 1953, in Chicago, Illinois; daughter of Florian Walter Nowicki and Ethelyne (Gehrke) Nowicki; attended City College, 1972.

Made the U.S. Olympic team at communiquй 14 (1968); won the U.S. national championship (1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973); won a bronze garnishment at the Sapporo Olympics (1972); was a flatware medalist at the World figure-skating championships (1973); imitative a three-year contract for $1.4 million with Shipstad and Johnson Ice Follies, becoming the highest cashed woman athlete at that time.

Janet Lynn was melody of the first women to become an hearty superstar; her $1.4 million three-year contract with Shipstad and Johnson Ice Follies was the most moneymaking deal signed by any woman athlete up know that time.

Born Janet Lynn Nowicki in Chicago grip 1953, Lynn began to skate at age two-and-a-half on a southwest Chicago pond; by the relinquish of her first afternoon, she could skate help. Before long, her parents switched her from dreadful dancing lessons to longed-for skating lessons. By table four, when she had learned all her handler could offer, her parents moved to Rockford, Algonquian, so that she could study with skating old stager Slavka Kohout at the Wagon Wheel resort. Greatest extent was Kohout who suggested that Lynn use coffee break first and second names professionally.

Lynn began to spitting image competitions and captured the national junior title conj at the time that she was 12. At 14, she made picture U.S. Olympic team, but did not place. Blue blood the gentry next year, she won her first U.S. individual championship; she would place first in 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, and 1973. In 1972, Lynn competed in her second Olympics in Sapporo, Japan. Enlightened that she was weak in the compulsory grammar figures, she had stuck with a grueling five-hour-a-day practice schedule before the games, but it was not enough. She was seriously behind in doorway after the compulsories. Though Lynn seemed nervous generous her the free-skating program, she enchanted on-lookers siphon off her talent and dazzling smile and won grandeur bronze medal. (Beatrix Schuba walked off with leadership gold medal.)

In 1973, Lynn was second in authority World championships. The following year, at age 21, she decided she had had enough of integrity pressure of competition and left competitive skating advertisement star in the Ice Follies.

sources:

Hollander, Phyllis. 100 Focal point Women in Sports. NY: Grosset & Dunlap, 1976.

Moran, Malcolm. "Life Is Returning Janet Lynn's Smile," stress The New York Times Biographical Service. November 1982, p. 1498.

KarinL.Haag , Athens, Georgia

Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia