Against Long Odds

As a child of eleven, Tenley Albright was a pint-sized figure skater with big ambitions, already precociously practicing for the U.S. Eastern Junior title. Then polio struck. It was of a non-paralytic spinal type, but it left her with weakened muscles. Tenley, daughter of a Boston surgeon, took her father's advice: "Try to continue skating. The exercise is what you need."

Against long odds, Tenley tried, hour after painstaking hour. Within four months she was in winning form. This week Tenley Albright, now 17, became the first U.S. girl ever to win the world figure-skating title, following such glamorous stars as Norway's Sonja Henie and Canada's Barbara Ann Scott.

Tenley won the title going away. To a man, raising their scoring cards in unison, the seven judges at the Swiss resort of Davos gave her top grades in her school figures. After two days of the compulsory figures, pretty, apple-cheeked Tenley was head & shoulders above the field. All that remained was for her to hold her lead in the four-minute freestyle skating on the final day.

Whirling, gliding and spinning to music from Offenbach's Fantasy, Tenley put on one of the fanciest freewheeling, freestyle exhibitions the dazzled judges had ever seen. She mixed splits with spins, double-loop jumps and double axels. With a chance to coast to the title, she skated so brilliantly that all seven judges awarded her top rank in the field of 19. Enthused one judge: "She did to figure skating what Pavlova did to ballet." Tenley's winning margin: 188.29-180.31 over Runner-Up Gundi Busch of Germany.

Tenley learned her school figures the hard way--by study, though she enjoys a teen-ager's typical hobbies: dancing, tennis, swimming, "all sorts of fun, and driving my Crosley." She learned her freestyle grace from the Boston Skating Club's famed Coach Willie Frick. At 14 she won the U.S. Junior title, and last year placed second behind Britain's Jeanette Altwegg in the Olympics. With Jeanette's retirement, Tenley was all set to win the 1952 world title. Then, right in the middle of the competition, she became ill again and was rushed home by plane.

This week, healthy and happy, Tenley had completed her comeback, achieved a six-year-long ambition. Pert and pretty (5 ft. 6 in., 120 Ibs.), blue-eyed Tenley has no further ambitions to join the icy whirl of the professional skating show: "I love skating for what it is." Instead, she plans to enter Radcliffe College next fall as the first step toward another goal. She has decided to be a physician, like her father.

With five-time World Champion Dick Button, now a student at Harvard Law School, in the pro ranks, a pair of his perpetual shadows came into the limelight and competed for the vacated title. After the compulsory figures, lanky Jimmy Grogan, 21, a pfc. ordered for European duty, held a slim lead over Hayes Alan Jenkins, 19, a Colorado College sophomore. In the final freestyle, Jenkins' flashier form provided the victory margin.

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