Word: debi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...beguiling as she is fickle, Bizet's Gypsy Carmen is a temptress whose passions run the emotional alphabet from A to Z. Even on ice. For Debi Thomas, the accent is on P. Her Carmen is usually powerful, plucky, practical and pretty. Katarina Witt's Carmen is a study in S, at once sensuous, seductive, stylish and shrewd. But last Saturday night, when the long-awaited skate-off between the two Carmens got under way in the Olympic Saddledome, America's sweetheart proved an unexpected B: a bobbly bundle of nerves capable only of bronze...
...Thomas held a slim lead over Witt, with Manley a distant third. Relying on the same ritual that had brought her so much luck two nights earlier, Thomas pounded the hands of Coach Alex McGowan with her fists. "This is your moment," he encouraged. "Now do it!" Alas for Debi, she didn't. Maybe it was the pressure. Maybe it was the ice, which she had complained about earlier in the week. Or maybe it was the fact that she skated last and had a hard time staying at her peak as the evening dragged on. Whatever it was, Thomas...
...their skating tug-of-pulchritude, Katarina Witt and Debi Thomas bared their claws and other whatnot. Referring to no one in particular, Witt observed, "I think every man prefers looking at a well-built woman to someone else who is the shape of a rubber ball." Thomas declared, "I think I have a great body." But the silly argument dissolved into stark drama. Thomas stumbled to a stunned third and Witt...
Only a loving relative of Debi Thomas' could insist that the judges treated her unfairly Saturday night, but that was not quite the case two days earlier. As Thomas finished her short program, she clapped her hands together in triumph. Then came the scores and the boos. Thomas' marks for technical merit were high, but her grades for artistic presentation were much lower than those for Katarina Witt. Alex McGowan, Thomas' coach, held his nose in disgust. Later, McGowan seemed to accuse the three judges from East bloc countries -- Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Witt's native East Germany...
...impression", she could avoid a technically challenging program. But those skaters who didn't pass the conventional glamour test had to design thrilling, athletic choreography, the kind of choreography that puts ice skating in the category of sport. No viewer can fairly say that the judges were biased against Debi Thomas--she stumbled and fell, she seemed awkward and unconfident. But it does seem that Witt won without the disadvantages Thomas and other skaters had to face: namely risky, exciting moves. While the audience waited anxiously to glimpse skaters perform a daring sequence of triple-jumps, who among the viewers...