Heir to Henie

World capital of the sport of figure skating is London, which has six indoor rinks to New York's two, and an amazing number of high-grade figure skaters. The women's figure skating championship of the world was held in London in 1928 and again last week. Winner in 1928 was Sonja Henie, in the second year of her ten-year career as the world's ablest woman skater. Last spring Sonja Henie stopped skating in tournaments to skate in the cinema and last week's winner, heir to Miss Henie's title, was an English girl who may hold it just as long. She was strong-legged Cecilia Colledge, 16-year-old daughter of Dr. Lionel Colledge, socialite London ear & throat specialist. Day after she won the title, with 2,528.9 points to 2,488.1 for her closet rival, England's Megan Taylor, Champion Colledge sailed for the U. S.

To London's 1928 world skating championship, Cecilia Colledge, 7, with her hair in pigtails, went with her mother who met a friend. The friend was Mrs. Thomas M. Vinson, there to chaperon and applaud her daughter Maribel, who last fortnight won the North American women's figure skating championship. By the time the Colledges left the rink, Mrs. Colledge had been fired with the ambition of making her daughter as good a skater as Mrs. Vinson's Maribel, who had promised to send small Cecilia a pair of skates she had outgrown. The skates fitted Cecilia exactly. In them, under her mother's careful supervision, she began a unique campaign of which last week's victory was the climax.

First move in Mrs. Colledge's plot to make her daughter a world-champion skater was to remove her from school, take her to Norway for expert skating instruction. The next year the Colledges stayed in London and Cecilia's training was entrusted to Swiss Jakob Gerschweiler. He lived in the Colledge home, told Cecilia what to eat, taught her not only skating but also French and German. For eleven months a year for the next eight years Cecilia Colledge followed the same routine every day--six hours of skating lessons supplemented by dancing lessons, exercises, massages. For recreation she took lessons in cooking and English literature. Dr. Colledge at first discouraged the plan to make his daughter a skating celebrity, later acquiesced but stanchly refused to allow Cecilia's younger brother Maule to concentrate on skating.

Figure skating tournaments are divided into free skating, in which competitors execute their own specialties, and school figures, selected by lot from 42 standard maneuvers with which all figure skaters are supposed to be familiar. Experts consider Champion Colledge's free skating repertoire more difficult than Sonja Henie's, especially her double-revolution jump which no other woman skater has ever tried in competition. Her next appearance on ice will be an exhibition at the Toronto Skating Carnival next week.

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