Janet Lynn

Janet Lynn
Full name	Janet Lynn Nowicki
nation	United States
birthday	April 6, 1953
place of birth	Chicago, Illinois
size	158 cm
Weight	49 kg
Career
discipline	Single run
society	Wagon Wheel FSC
Trainer	Slavka Kohout
status	resigned
Medal table
Olympic medals 0 × 0 × 1 × World Cup medals 0 × 1 × 1 ×
winter Olympics bronze Sapporo 1972 Ladies  World figure skating championships bronze Calgary 1972 Ladies silver Bratislava 1973 Ladies

Janet Lynn Nowicki (born April 6, 1953 in Chicago , Illinois ) is a former American figure skater who started in a single run .

Janet Lynn started figure skating very early. Her parents had encouraged her to help her get rid of her shyness. However, she loved figure skating precisely because it was where she could express herself without having to talk. She had her first ice skating performance with others at the age of four at Chicago Stadium. At eight, she lived part of her life away from home to be around her trainer, Slavka Kohout , who worked at Rockton . Lynn's family later moved from Chicago to the Evergreen Park suburb to be closer to the training center. Lynn decided to leave out her actual surname Nowicki and only use her middle name Lynn, as her last name was constantly misspelled and pronounced.

In 1966 she won the national junior championship and already showed her jumping talent there, in which she landed a triple salchow , which at that time was rarely shown by figure skaters. In the senior class, she would later be one of the first women to have a triple toe loop in her program.

In their first national championships , Lynn was fourth in 1967 and finally third in 1968, which meant that the only fourteen-year-old qualified for the Olympic Games in Grenoble . There she took ninth place. It was their first international competition. This was followed by her first world championship , in which she was also ninth. In 1969 she became a national champion for the first time . Despite the injury-related absence of the Canadian Karen Magnussen and the Czechoslovak Hana Mašková , she did not come in fifth place at the World Championships , nor behind the runner-up at the US Championships, Julie Lynn Holmes .

The world championships remained a problem for them. In 1970 in Ljubljana she was sixth despite the second-best freestyle, with her compatriot Holmes, who she had still clearly under control at the national championships , won the bronze medal. Gaby Seyfert from the GDR won ahead of the Austrian Beatrix Schuba . Lynn's main problem was her inconsistency in the compulsory figures, which she had to compensate for with the freestyle, which was very difficult at the time as the compulsory figures had a much higher weighting in the end result than the freestyle. Lynn tried to improve in the compulsory figures by starting a collaboration with the former French double Olympic champion in pair skating , Pierre Brunet , who trained in New York and had already achieved great success as a coach with Carol Heiss and Donald Jackson . At the World Championships in Lyon in 1971 , she ranked fifth after the compulsory figures, with Schuba leading, as expected, ahead of Lynn's compatriot Holmes. However, the first place in the freestyle did not help Lynn to work her way up to a medal rank. She came in fourth. Schuba won despite the seventh best freestyle ahead of Holmes, who had shown the fifth best freestyle. The Canadian Magnussen won bronze. But the audience celebrated Lynn more than the medalists.

In the 1972 Olympic year, Lynn beat Holmes for the fourth time in a row at the national championships . At the Olympic Games in Sapporo , Lynn ranked fourth after the mandatory figures and won the freestyle. So she secured the bronze medal behind Schuba and Magnussen, but ahead of Holmes. This ranking was repeated at the World Championships in Calgary , although Schuba only showed the ninth-best freestyle and Lynn had been in third place before her freestyle victory.

At that time, Lynn was struggling with weight problems and motivation problems due to her unsatisfactory international results. But as a deeply believing Christian, she always believed that she had to use the talent that God had given her. So she went on and won her fifth national title in a row in 1973 . After the short program was introduced and Schuba resigned, it looked as if only Magnussen could endanger Lynn. At the World Championships in Bratislava , she then showed her best career performance in the compulsory figures. She came second there. However, she fell twice in the newly introduced short program, where she was expected to win, and only placed 12th there, but she won the freestyle and was runner-up behind Magnussen. This marked the end of Lynn's amateur career.

The contrast between Janet Lynn and Beatrix Schuba was one of the reasons why the International Skating Union reduced the value of the compulsory figures by introducing the short program. Since the running of compulsory figures was hardly broadcast on television and when it was, it was very unsuitable for broadcasting and difficult to understand for laypeople, many viewers were irritated and angry when superior skaters like Lynn had no chance against average skaters like Schuba in the end.

In addition to her talent for jumping, Lynn is best remembered for her graceful, light-footed running style and the use of her whole body to give expression to the music she ran to and for the integration of jumps into her choreography. For many, Lynn is considered the best runner in history without ever having won a gold medal at world championships and the Olympic Games.

Even after the end of her amateur career, her popularity remained so great that the ice revue Ice Follies offered her a three-year contract of almost one and a half million dollars, which made her the highest paid professional athlete of her time. Their presence at Ice Follies enhanced the ice revue compared to the better known Ice Capades. In 1973 she published the autobiographical book Peace and Love , in which she talks about her life, figure skating and her beliefs. In 1974, Lynn became professional world champion in a tournament founded by Richard Button . After two years, Lynn's professional career came to an end as she had problems with allergy-related asthma that worsened in the air at ice rinks. In 1975 she therefore ended her figure skating career and started a family. However, in the early 1980s, when her asthma was back under control, she returned and ran for a few more years. She appeared again in buttons competitions and ran with John Curry in his ice ballet "The Snow Queen" produced for television. Lynn also worked as a Christian motivational speaker and wrote articles to promote conservative politics. She is married to Rick Salomon, with whom she has five sons.

Results

Competition / year	1967	1968	1969	1970	1971	1972	1973
winter Olympics		9.				3.
World championships		9.	5.	6th	4th	3.	2.
American championships	4th	3.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.

Web links

• Janet Lynn in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Biography and links
• Lynn's Article on Family, Faith and Freedom

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from September 10, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) 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.  
2. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from September 10, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) 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.  
3. ↑ http://figureskating.about.com/od/famousfemaleiceskater1/p/janetlynn.htm