Debi Thomas
| Debi Thomas | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Full name | Debra Janine Thomas | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Country represented | United States | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born |
March 25, 1967 Poughkeepsie, New York, United States |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Height | 1.67 m (5 ft 5 1⁄2 in) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Former coach | Alex McGowan | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Skating club | Los Angeles Figure Skating Club | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Medal record
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
Debra Janine Thomas (born March 25, 1967) is an American former figure skater and physician. She is the 1986 World champion, the 1988 Olympic bronze medalist, and a two-time U.S. national champion. Her rivalry with East Germany's Katarina Witt at the 1988 Calgary Olympics was known as the Battle of the Carmens.
Thomas was born in Poughkeepsie, New York and grew up in San Jose, California. Her parents divorced when she was young. Her mother worked as a computer programming analyst in Sunnyvale, California.
Thomas started skating at age 5 in San Jose. She competed in her first figure skating competition at age 9, finishing in first place. From then on, she was hooked on competitive skating. She attributes most of her success to her mother who sacrificed to drive her over 100 miles a day between home, school, and the ice rink.
As a young child, Thomas was coached by Barbara Toigo Vitkovits at Eastridge Mall in San Jose. At age 10, Thomas was introduced to Scottish skating coach Alex McGowan. In 1983, she began to represent the Los Angeles Figure Skating Club, which launched her career. McGowan would remain her coach until she retired from amateur competition at age 21.
Thomas won both the 1986 U.S. national title and the 1986 World Championships; those achievements earned Thomas the ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year award that year. She was the first female athlete to win those titles while attending college full-time since Tenley Albright in the 1950s. She was the first African-American to hold U.S. National titles in ladies' singles figure skating. Thomas was a pre-med student at Stanford University during this time although it was unusual for a top U.S. skater to go to college at the same time as competing. That year she received a Candace Award for Trailblazing from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women.
...
Wikipedia