Thomas, Debi (1967—)

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Thomas, Debi (1967—)

Figure skater who was the first African-American to win a medal at any Winter Olympics. Born on March 25, 1967, in Poughkeepsie, New York; daughter of McKinley Thomas (a program manager) and Janice Thomas (a computer analyst); trained with Alex Mc-Gowan; Stanford University, B.A., 1991; attended Northwestern University Medical School; married Brian Vanden Hogen, on March 15, 1988 (divorced); married Christopher Bequette (an attorney), in 1997; children: (second marriage) Luc (b. 1997).

Won both U.S. and World championships (1986); won U.S. championship (1988); won bronze medal, Winter Olympics, Calgary, Canada (1988); won bronze medal, World Figure Skating championships, Budapest, Hungary (1988).

American figure skater Debi Thomas made history at Calgary Olympics in 1988 when her bronze-medal win made her the first African-American in history to medal at any Winter Games. As the first black athlete to skate at a level of world competition, she captured the national spotlight with a stunning combination of athleticism and grace. Unlike many skaters who go on from Olympic victories to lucrative careers in ice shows, Thomas then traded her sequins in for scrubs, becoming an aspiring orthopedic surgeon.

She was born on March 25, 1967, in Poughkeepsie, New York. Her mother Janice Thomas , a computer analyst, and her father McKinley Thomas, a program manager, divorced while Debi was still young. While raising her two children, Janice exposed them to opera, ballet, and ice shows. A clown performer on the ice caught Debi's attention, and at five she began taking skating lessons. Her first victory in competition, at age nine, solidified her passion for the sport. The Scottish coach Alex McGowan became her trainer the following year, and she made her first successful triple jump at age 11. After winning a silver medal in the novice class at 12, Thomas left school in order to train for the national junior championship. The year 1980 proved a disappointment, however, and she did not advance to the nationals. She made the decision to return to school, later telling Time, "I wasn't going to put the rest of my life on the line in front of some panel of judges who just might not like my yellow dress."

There were also financial realities which she had to confront. Notes Anne Janette Johnson: "Her family was not wealthy, and the considerable training costs—sometimes as much as $25,000 a year—put a burden on Janice Thomas especially. Often Debi would have to forego training in the summertime so her mother could catch up on the bills. Debi was also famous for making her own costumes, and for using worn-out skates until they crumbled." While she attended San Mateo High School, her mother drove her 150 miles a day so that she could practice at Redwood City Ice Lodge. "My mom made all the sacrifices that allowed me to reach my potential," said Thomas.

Thomas excelled not only in the rink but also in the classroom, earning acceptance to Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton. When asked

on her application to Stanford, the school she chose to attend, to provide a description of herself, Thomas wrote "invincible." In 1986, she was in the premed program at Stanford when she won the national championships. Thomas turned heads when she beat East Germany's Katarina Witt to win the World championship six months later. Unwilling to stop her studies to train full time, Thomas proved unable to hold her titles in 1987 (the national title went to Jill Trenary ; the world title to Witt). These losses prompted Thomas to take a year off from Stanford to begin practicing with her coach six days a week at the Olympic training facility in Boulder, Colorado. Among those with whom Thomas worked was the former Olympic champion Peggy Fleming and the American Ballet Theater dancer George de la Pena, who had been sent by Mikhail Baryshnikov after Thomas went to Baryshnikov for advice. Regaining her national title in 1988, Thomas was one of the favorites going into the Winter Olympics.

The women's figure-skating finals in Calgary were to become known as the "battle of the Carmens," because, purely by coincidence, both Thomas and Witt skated to music based on the opera Carmen for their long programs. Witt, skating first, performed with her trademark artistry and landed all her jumps. Witt's jumps were conservative, however, opening the door to the gold medal for Thomas if she could land her more difficult jumps. Thomas, whom James Page called "[p]erhaps the most physically powerful performer ever seen in figure skating," fell out of a jump early in her program, landing on both feet, and after that, notes Johnson, "the heart seemed to go out of her performance." Witt took the gold, while Canada's Elizabeth Manley won the silver. A disappointed Thomas took home the bronze.

After four years of skating with Stars on Ice, Thomas turned in her skates so as to dedicate herself fully to medical school. Like winning an Olympic medal, becoming a doctor was a childhood ambition, and Thomas began studying orthopedic surgery at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago. With a desire to specialize in sports medicine, she set her sights on having her own training complex, complete with ice rink, ballet room, weight room, and sports-medicine clinic. In 1997, she married attorney Christopher Bequette and had a son named Luc (Thomas' first marriage to Brian Vanden Hogen in 1988 had ended in divorce after three years). Showing continuing interest in perhaps pursuing yet another childhood dream, in 1995 Thomas made a visit to a NASA training center in consideration of becoming a candidate for astronaut training. "I tell people I'm too stupid to know what's impossible," she remarked to Time in 1996. "I had ridiculously large dreams, and half the time they came true."