Randy Gardner

Randy Gardner
nation	United States
birthday	2nd December 1958
place of birth	los Angeles
Career
discipline	Pair skating
Partner	Tai Babilonia
society	LAFSC
Trainer	John Nicks
status	resigned
Medal table
World Cup medals 1 × 0 × 2 ×
World figure skating championships bronze Tokyo 1977 Couples bronze Ottawa 1978 Couples gold Vienna 1979 Couples

Randy Gardner (born December 2, 1958 in Los Angeles ) is a former American figure skater who started pair skating .

Gardner's figure skating partner was Tai Babilonia . Both started figure skating together when Gardner was ten and Babilonia eight. Your trainer was John Nicks . From 1976 to 1980 Gardner and Babilonia became US champions . They made their debut at world championships in 1974 in Munich , where they finished tenth. They repeated this result a year later . They reached the top of the world in 1976. They finished fifth at both the World Cup and the Olympic Games . They won their first medal with bronze behind the Soviet couples Irina Rodnina and Alexander Saizew as well as Irina Vorobjowa and Alexander Vlasow at the 1977 World Championships in Tokyo . Also in the following year they won the bronze medal at the world championships in Ottawa , this time behind Rodnina and Saizew and the GDR couple Manuela Mager and Uwe Bewersdorf . In 1979 Irina Rodnina and Alexander Saizew took a break because Rodnina was pregnant. This cleared the way for the US couple. Gardner and Babilonia became world champions in Vienna . It was the USA's first pair skating world title since 1950 , when Karol and Peter Kennedy won, and it was the second and last pair skating world championship win for the USA to date. It was also the first non-Soviet pair skating world title since 1964 .

The meeting of Gardner / Babilonia and Rodnina / Saizew, who returned after maternity leave, was to be a highlight of the 1980 Olympic Games in Lake Placid . However, this did not happen due to an injury to Randy Gardner during training in Lake Placid. He was given local anesthesia on the day of the competition to relieve the pain, but then couldn't control his leg enough and dropped his partner several times in the warm-up area. As a result, the couple had to withdraw and watch Rodnina / Saizew pass the Olympic victory. Then Gardner and Babilonia ended their amateur careers and switched to the professionals. Until 2008 they ran together at ice revues. Gardner also worked as a choreographer and worked for the TV show Skating with Celebrities on the TV channel FOX .

Randy Gardner learned as an adult that he had been adopted. He then looked for his biological mother and found her. In 2006, Gardner came out as gay .

Results

Pair skating

(with Tai Babilonia )

Competition / year	1974	1975	1976	1977	1978	1979	1980
winter Olympics			5.				Z
World championships	10.	10.	5.	3.	3.	1.
American championships	2.	2.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.

• Z = withdrawn

Web links

• Randy Gardner in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Outsports: Gayest Sport in America ( Memento of the original from January 16, 2012 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.