Bradley Lord

Bradley Richard Lord (born August 22, 1939 in Swampscott , Massachusetts , † February 15, 1961 in Berg-Kampenhout , Belgium ) was an American figure skater who started in a single run .

Life

Lord was the son of Roy and Alfreda Lord. He had an older brother, Bruce. He began skating on an improvised ice rink in Abbott Park across from his home on Hampden Street at the age of five and fell in love with the sport.

First Lord trained with Lillian Tribby at the North Shore Sports Center in Lynn, then he switched to the famous Montgomery Wilson and thus to the Skating Club of Boston .

In 1957 he became the American junior champion. In the same year he began studying commercial graphics at Boston University . In the national championships of the seniors he was fourth in 1959 and played his first world championship in Colorado Springs , where he finished eighth. In 1960 Lord was again fourth at the US Championships. This time, this fourth place hit him very hard, because it had always been his dream to be able to take part in the Olympic Games and he just missed it by 94 hundredths. At the World Championships in Vancouver , he was sixth and thus, after the resignation of the reigning Olympic champion and world champion David Jenkins , the best American.

In 1961, Bradley Lord was American champion at Broadmoor World Arena in Colorado Springs . He outstripped Gregory Kelley with a freestyle that Richard Button praised in the subsequent interview on the ice as "beautifully skated" . Two weeks later he won the silver medal at the North American Championships behind Canadian Donald Jackson and ahead of Kelley. It was his last appearance. On the way to the World Cup in Prague, the Boeing 707 of Sabena flight 548 crashed on approach to Brussels in Berg-Kampenhout. All 72 passengers, the crew and a farmer on the ground were killed, including the entire 18-man US crew and their 16 relatives. The world championship in Prague was canceled.

Lord's mother had not been on the plane due to an operation, the first time she had not accompanied him to a tournament. Lord had spent the last days of his life in the house of his brother Bruce and his pregnant wife Johanne to keep quiet from the public. The couple named their child after his late uncle, Bradley.

Bradley Lord was inducted into the National Hall of Fame in 2011 on the 50th anniversary of the plane crash.

Results

Competition / year	1959	1960	1961
World championships	8th.	6th
American championships	4th	4th	1.

Web links

• Article about Lord
• Video of his freestyle in 1961, which made him US champion, followed by an interview

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://64.207.226.21:8215/Shell.asp?cat=7&id=206&sid=32390  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ http://64.207.226.21:8215/Shell.asp?cat=7&id=206&sid=32390  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXMBVTQHC0o
4. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ http://www.wickedlocal.com/swampscott/news/x966119305/Bradley-Lord-to-be-enshrined-in-Figure-Skating-Hall-of-Fame
6. ↑ US Figure Skating Hall of Fame Members. In: worldskatingmuseum.org. World Figure Skating Museum & Hall of Fame, accessed January 17, 2016 .