Born: 28 November, 1920, in London.
Died: 12 April, 2008, in Massachusetts, aged 87. CECILIA Colledge was an innovative figure skater who became the youngest athlete to compete in the Winter Olympics and, later, a world ch
ampion and Olympic silver medallist.
Competing in the Lake Placid Olympics in February 1932, Colledge finished in eighth place as Sonja Henie of Norway captured the women's gold medal. But there was plenty of time for Colledge to reach the pinnacle of figure skating. She had turned 11 the previous November.
Colledge was often overshadowed by Henie, one of figure skating's biggest stars, but she proved to be more than a precocious talent.
Colledge was the first woman to execute a double-rotation jump in competition, a salchow at the 1936 European championships in Berlin. She invented the camel and layback spins and the one-foot axel jump.
Colledge was narrowly beaten by Henie for the women's championship in the 1936 Winter Olympics, but she won the world championship in 1937. She was the European women's champion from 1937-39 and British national women's champion six times, capturing her last title in 1946.
Magdalena Cecilia Colledge grew up in London, where her father, Lionel, was a prominent throat surgeon. When Cecilia was seven, her mother, Margaret, took her to see the world championships, which Henie won, at the Ice Club in London. Margaret became determined to mould her daughter into an elite skater.
The young Colledge was soon practising six hours a day, with expert coaching and working with a circus contortionist known as Miss Lee, who helped her loosen her stiff posture, enabling her to do backbends by having her stand on her hands with her torso stretched into an arch.
"I can assure you it was not my idea of pleasure," she said in an interview. "Each time I had a lesson it would break all the little blood vessels in my eyes."
After competing at Lake Placid, Colledge was hoping for a gold medal at the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, notwithstanding the presence of the imposing Henie and Colledge's distaste for a costume her mother had selected.
"My mother had this ghastly silver dress made for me," Colledge said in 1998. "I was skating for a gold medal, and you don't wear silver. I wanted to wear my little green velvet dress. Whenever I wore my green dress, I thought I did well. I wouldn't dress anybody I knew in silver."
Colledge was second in the compulsories, slightly behind Henie, who was so unnerved by the challenge that she ripped down a judges' scoring sheet posted on a wall. Henie widened her lead a bit in the free skate and captured her third Olympic gold medal, while Colledge settled for the medal that matched the colour of her dress.
Henie retired soon afterwards to pursue a career in movies. Colledge became the world champion in 1937 at London, defeating her British rival, Megan Taylor, who had also competed at Lake Placid at the age of 11, but was a month older than Colledge.
Colledge and Taylor were expected to compete for the gold at the 1940 Winter Olympics, but the Games were cancelled following the outbreak of the Second World War.
Colledge drove a civilian ambulance in London during the blitz, and her brother, Maule, became a flight lieutenant in the Royal Air Force. He never returned from a September 1943 mission over Berlin.
Colledge became a professional skater in the late 1940s, appearing in ice shows, then settled in the United States, coaching elite athletes at the Skating Club of Boston from 1952-77.
Long after the war years, Colledge evidently remained tormented by the loss of her brother in combat. Asked once if she would return to Britain, she replied: "There was nothing left for me there except unhappy memories." She sometimes wore a brooch designed from RAF wings willed to her by a colleague of her brother who also died in the war.
Colledge never married and had no immediate survivors.
The full article contains 683 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
