Peggy Fleming

Peggy Fleming
Full name	Peggy Gale Fleming
nation	United States
birthday	July 27, 1948
place of birth	San Jose, California
size	163 cm
Weight	50 kg
Career
society	Arctic Blades FSC, Broadmoor Skating Club
status	resigned
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 0 × 0 × World Cup medals 3 × 0 × 1 ×
winter Olympics gold Grenoble 1968 Ladies  World figure skating championships bronze Colorado Springs 1965 Ladies gold Davos 1966 Ladies gold Vienna 1967 Ladies gold Geneva 1968 Ladies

Peggy Gale Fleming (born July 27, 1948 in San José , California ) is a former American figure skater who started in a single run . She is the Olympic champion from 1968 and the world champion from 1966 to 1968 .

Peggy Fleming was born in San José, California, to Doris Elizabeth Deal and newspaper journalist Eugene Fleming. She started figure skating at the age of nine. First she trained with William Kipp . When he was killed in the plane crash of the US team on the way to the World Cup in Prague in 1961, Carlo Fassi became their new coach. Fleming was considered an extremely elegant runner and was a direct competitor of Gabriele Seyfert .

From 1964 to 1968, Fleming was American champion in figure skating for women. During the same period she took part in world championships . She won her first medal there when she took part for the second time, in 1965 in Colorado Springs . She won bronze behind the Canadian Petra Burka and the Austrian Regine Heitzer . Her first world championship title followed a year later in Davos . She won with a unanimous judge's decision in front of her main competitor Gaby Seyfert from the GDR. At the 1967 World Cup in Vienna , she again unanimously defended her title in front of Seyfert. Fleming succeeded again in 1968 in Geneva . There she won her third gold in a row at her last World Cup. At the Olympic Games in Grenoble , her second after 1964 in Innsbruck , where she finished sixth, she was, as expected, Olympic champion ahead of Seyfert. Peggy Fleming became very famous because the 1968 Winter Olympics were first broadcast in color on U.S. television, she won the only gold medal for the U.S. at those Games, and she was also the first internationally successful U.S. figure skater since the 1961 plane crash. She was honored with the Associated Press Athlete of the Year award in 1968 .

After her Olympic victory, she switched to the professionals and went to the revue Ice Capades. She also had guest appearances on the revue Ice Follies, where the much admired highlight was her solo run in blue light to Ave Maria . Fleming ran for four US presidents . In 1976 she was inducted into the Figure Skating Hall of Fame .

Fleming has three siblings. In 1970 she married the dermatologist Greg Jenkins, who had previously been an ice dancer . The couple has two sons, Andy, b. 1977 and Todd, b. 1988. In 1998, Fleming was diagnosed with breast cancer and successfully treated. In 1999 she became a grandmother. She now has three grandchildren.

Fleming has been a television commentator for the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) for over 20 years . She is also the spokesperson for the National Osteoporosis Foundation in the United States and is an activist for breast cancer prevention and prevention. Fleming and her husband own a wine growing region in California.

Results

Competition / year	1964	1965	1966	1967	1968
winter Olympics	6th				1.
World championships	7th	3.	1.	1.	1.
American championships	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.

Works

• Peggy Fleming, Peter Kaminsky: The Long Program: Skating Toward Life's Victories . Pocket Books, New York 1999, ISBN 0-671-03886-9 .

Peggy Fleming on postage stamps

• 

  Peggy Fleming and Lyndon B. Johnson on UAE postage stamp (1968)

Web links

• Peggy Fleming's website
• Peggy Fleming in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Peggy Fleming in the Internet Movie Database (English)