Debi Thomas 1967–

Olympic figure skater

In 1986, Debi Thomas became the first African American to win senior championship titles in both American and world figure skating competitions, an achievement all the more unusual given the sport’s country-club image. Thomas, who was only 18-years-old at the time, had already spent half of her life in training, and was also a pursuing an education at Stanford University as well. Known for her fearless, confident jumps, she was a favorite for the gold medal in women’s figure skating at the 1988 Winter Olympic Games in Calgary, Canada. However, she was bested by her East German rival Katarina Witt.

Born in March of 1967, Thomas spent her early life in Poughkeepsie, New York, during a time when her mother, Janice Thomas, was working for computer giant IBM as a program analyst. The family—which included Thomas’s father, McKinley, and a half-brother—moved to San Jose, California, when both McKinley and Janice Thomas were offered jobs with one of the new-technology companies that helped create what would become Silicon Valley. The Thomases were one of the few African American families in their neighborhood, and Thomas’s early life was further challenged in 1974 when her parents divorced.

Junior-High School Dropout

After attending an Ice Follies show as a toddler, Thomas told her mother that she wanted to skate for a living. She put on her first pair of ice skates at the age of five, and won her first competition four years later, the same year that she began taking formal lessons. The following year, she signed on with a Scottish coach, Alex McGowan, who still guided Thomas’s career when she trained for the Olympics. However, the costs of skates, lessons, competition fees, travel, and costumes quickly added up. Thomas’s mother sometimes found it difficult to raise her children and fund the $25,000-a-year sport as a single parent. At times, Thomas had to stop lessons for weeks at a stretch.

In the elitist world of teen figure skating, Thomas encountered discrimination both overt and subtle. On one occasion, the family returned home from a competition to find a cross burning on their lawn. Judges often gave better marks to Thomas’s competitors who had not attempted the technically difficult jumps that Thomas landed so flawlessly. She persevered, however, and became known for her self-assured style as a skater. At the age of 12, Thomas advanced all the way

At a Glance…

Born March 25, 1967, in Poughkeepsie, NY; daughter of McKinley Thomas (a computer program manager) and Janice Thomas (a computer program analyst); married Brian Vanden Hogen, March 15, 1988 (divorced 1991); married Chris Bequette (an attorney), 1996; children: Luc. Education: Stanford University, bachelor’s degree, 1991; Northwestern University, M.D., 1998.

Career: Amateur figure skater, 1980-92; professional figure skater, 1992-96.

Awards: National Sports Festival, 1985, winner; United States Ladies Figure Skating champion, 1986; World Figure Skating Championships, first-place female winner, 1986; bronze medalist in women’s figure skating, Winter Olympic Games, 1988.

Addresses: Home —Little Rock, AR.

to the national novice finals, where she won a silver medal. Her mother than allowed her to finish the eighth grade by taking correspondence courses so that she could devote more time to her training. Unfortunately, Thomas fared poorly in the junior ladies’ competition that year. “Right then I decided I wasn’t going to put the rest of my life on the line in front of some judges who might not like my yellow dress,” Thomas recalled in an interview with Time’s Tom Callahan. Both Thomas and her mother vowed never again to allow skating to come before education.

Thomas attended high school in San Mateo, California, not far from a rink where she and McGowan spent several hours a week training. For four years, her mother drove 150 miles a day between the rink and Thomas’s high school, her own job, and the family home. Thomas napped or did her homework in the car; she also made her own dresses for competitions. Despite her heavy extracurricular schedule, Thomas earned excellent grades, and was accepted to Harvard, Princeton and Stanford universities. In the fall of 1985, she entered Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.

In February of 1986, Thomas won the senior women’s title at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships by successfully completing five triple jumps, an impressive athletic performance. She became the first African American to win a non-novice title, and the media seized upon the story of the hardworking Stanford freshman who planned to become a doctor after she competed in the Winter Olympics. Thomas’s success was all the more remarkable in light of the fact that very few skaters at this level attended college while training, due to the full-time demands of figure skating. Thomas was studying medical microbiology at the time, a challenging program for any student. Her coach complained that she had no time to run, work out with weights, or do any other off-ice training. “She isn’t able to eat or sleep at proper hours,” McGowan told Sports Illustrated’s writer E.M. Swift. “When Debi arrives at the rink for training, she’s exhausted.”

Won a World Championship

Thomas’s celebrity status received an added boost when she took the world championship title from Katarina Witt, an East German skater who had won the gold medal at the 1984 Winter Olympic Games in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. Much of the media attention focused on Thomas as a minority in a sport that was traditionally dominated by the wealthy. Although she had no predecessors to follow, Thomas told Callahan in Time that “I never felt I had to have a role model… I didn’t think I had to see a black woman do this to believe it’s possible.”

During her sophomore year, Thomas found it a bit more difficult to keep up the difficult pace of college and competition. In early 1987, she lost both her national title to Jill Trenary and her world championship crown to Witt. Beginning in the summer of 1987, Thomas took a leave of absence from school and began training in Boulder, Colorado, in preparation for the 1988 Olympic Games. On a visit to New York, she worked on her choreography with ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov. She also planned an appearance in Calgary, the site of the 1988 Winter Olympics, that would feature her interpretation of a selection from the Bizet opera Carmen in her artistic program.

When Thomas arrived in Calgary in early 1988, she was the subject of a great deal of media attention. No American woman had won a gold medal in figure skating since Dorothy Hamill in 1976, and Witt had also selected a number from Carmen as well. “Every time I open the papers, they’re trying to make this thing between me and Katarina,” Time journalist Jill Smolowe quoted her as saying. “It bugs me. We’re just two people.” During the Olympic competition, Witt stood very close to the ice in order to intimidate Thomas during her performance. The pressure affected Thomas, and she made a small error during the first minute of her performance. She was never able to recover completely. Witt won the gold medal again, while Canadian skater Elizabeth Manley took the silver. Thomas captured the bronze medal, and became the first African American to win a medal in the any Winter Olympic sport.

“Thomas deserved credit for maintaining considerable poise in the face of all the preshow hype, as did Witt,” wrote Smolowe in Time. Thomas later admitted that she dreaded having to compete in the world championships only a few weeks after the Winter Olympics. The world championships marked the final time that Witt, Thomas, and several other top Olympic skaters would compete as amateurs. “The three weeks after the Olympics were probably the hardest of my life,” Thomas told Sports Illustrated Swift. “I cried every day.” She also remarked in Sports Illustrated that the support she received from others helped to ease her disappointment for failing to win the gold medal. “I felt I’d let down the whole U.S.,” said Thomas. “But then I got so many letters of support. I realized it really didn’t matter that much that I didn’t win the gold.”

In the world championships held in Budapest, Hungary, Thomas competed surprisingly well against Witt. She also celebrated her 21st birthday there, and revealed that she had married a few days earlier. Over the next four years, Thomas divided her time between her studies at Stanford and a professional career with Stars on Ice. She earned her bachelor’s degree in 1991, and retired from skating the following year to enter the medical degree program at Northwestern University. Her marriage did not last. However, in early 1996, a handsome man recognized her in an airport, waved to her, and later sent her a letter. Thomas wrote back to him and, after only dating for a month, married Arkansas attorney Chris Bequette. Thomas completed medical school in 1997, and gave birth to a son, Luc, that same summer.