Maribel Vinson

Maribel Vinson
Full name	Maribel Yerxa Vinson-Owen
nation	United States
birthday	October 12, 1911
place of birth	Winchester, Massachusetts
date of death	February 15, 1961
Place of death	Berg-Kampenhout, Belgium
Career
discipline	Single run, pair run
Partner	Thornton Coolidge, George Hill
society	Skating Club of Boston
Medal table
Olympic medals 0 × 0 × 1 × World Cup medals 0 × 1 × 1 × EM medals 0 × 0 × 1 ×
winter Olympics bronze Lake Placid 1932 Ladies  World figure skating championships silver London 1928 Ladies bronze New York City 1930 Ladies  European figure skating championships bronze Seefeld 1934 Ladies

Maribel Yerxa Vinson-Owen (born October 12, 1911 in Winchester , Massachusetts , † February 15, 1961 in Berg-Kampenhout , Belgium ) was an American figure skater and figure skating coach.

Life

Maribel Vinson was the daughter of Thomas and Gertrude Vinson from Winchester, Massachusetts. Both parents were figure skaters. Maribel became an honorary member of the Cambridge Ice Skating Club when she was born . At the age of nine, she began training with Willie Frick at the Boston Arena . At the age of twelve, Vinson became the US junior champion. In addition to her athletic career, she studied at Radcliffe College .

In the years from 1928 to 1937, with the exception of 1934, Maribel Vinson was nine times American champion in women's figure skating. To date she holds the national record with nine titles together with Michelle Kwan . In 1928 and 1929 Vinson also won the pair skating championships with Thornton Coolidge , which she also succeeded in 1933 and 1935 to 1937 with ice skating partner George Hill . With him she took part in the World Championships in 1931 and 1936 and in the Olympic Games in 1936 , where they always took fifth place. In the individual run , Vinson was much more successful at international level. When non-Europeans were still allowed to take part in European championships, she won bronze at her only European championship appearance in Seefeld in 1934, behind Sonja Henie and Liselotte Landbeck . In the period from 1928 to 1934 she took part in five world championships and was able to win two medals. In 1928 she was runner- up in London behind Sonja Henie and in 1930 in New York she won bronze behind Henie and the Canadian Cecil Smith . Vinson also took part in three individual Olympic Games . In 1928 in St. Moritz she missed a medal as fourth, in 1932 in Lake Placid it was enough to win bronze behind Sonja Henie and Fritzi Burger and in 1936 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen , as in the couples competition, she was fifth.

When Vinson was still active in sports in her thirties, she became the New York Times' first female sports journalist . After the end of her amateur career, she married the Canadian figure skater Guy Owen , with whom she appeared as a professional in an ice skating show. After the birth of their children Maribel Yerxa Owen , 1940, and Laurence Rochon Owen , 1944, Vinson-Owen returned to the ice ring as a figure skating coach. Her husband died unexpectedly in 1952 at the age of 41, so she had to raise her children alone. Later, when her daughters became interested in figure skating, she coached them. As a trainer, Vinson-Owen led Tenley Albright to five national championship titles and the first ever Olympic victory for an American in women's figure skating . She also taught Frank Carroll , who would later become one of the best coaches in the world himself and who led Michelle Kwan and Evan Lysacek to numerous successes.

In 1961, Maribel Vinson's daughter of the same name won the national pair skating championship with Dudley Richards . In the same tournament, Vinson's younger daughter, 16-year-old Laurence, won the national women's championship. It was the first championship to be televised and so the family immediately became well known. As a trainer, Maribel Vinson was also part of the US team that had been nominated for the 1961 World Cup in Prague, as well as her two daughters, who are the reigning champions at Idlewild Airport, today's John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York boarded a Boeing 707 in the direction of Czechoslovakia . The Sabena flight 548 , a night flight, was supposed to stop in Brussels . There, however, the pilots had to abort the landing approach and make a new attempt to try another runway. The plane crashed on farmland in Berg-Kampenhout. All 61 passengers, the 11-person crew and a farmer on the ground were killed, including the entire 18-person US crew and their 16 relatives. The world championship in Prague was canceled. The remains of the Vinson-Owens were transferred to the United States and buried in the Story Chapel Columbarium of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge , Massachusetts. In 1976, Vinson was inducted into the national Hall of Fame, a second time in 1994 with her ice skating partner George Hill and again in 2011, as was the entire US team who had an accident in 1961. In 2002 she was also inducted into the Figure Skating Hall of Fame . In her hometown of Winchester, the Vinson-Owen School was named after her.

Results

Single run

Competition / year	1926	1927	1928	1929	1930	1931	1932	1933	1934	1935	1936	1937
winter Olympics			4th				3.				5.
World championships			2.		3.	4th	4th		5.
European championships									3.
American championships	3.	2.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.		1.	1.	1.

Pair skating

(with George Hill )

Competition / year	1928	1929	1930	1931	1932	1933	1934	1935	1936	1937
winter Olympics									5.
World championships				5.					5.
American championships	1.*	1.*	2.	2.	2.	1.		1.	1.	1.

(*) with Thornton Coolidge

Books

Maribel Vinson-Owen wrote some books about figure skating:

• Primer of Figure Skating - McGraw-Hill / Whittlesey House (1938)
• Advanced Figure Skating - McGraw-Hill / Whittlesey House (1940)
• The Fun of Figure Skating - Harper & Brothers (1960)

Web links

• Maribel Vinson in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ US Figure Skating Hall of Fame Members. In: worldskatingmuseum.org. World Figure Skating Museum & Hall of Fame, accessed January 17, 2016 .