Debi Thomas

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.

Debra Janine Thomas (born March 25, 1967) is an American figure skater and physician.

Thomas began with a triple toe-triple toe combination, which was rare for a female skater in the 1980s.

The second triple was not perfect and by her own admission, Thomas gave up on the rest of the program.

Overall, she finished third and won the bronze medal, behind Witt and Canadian skater Elizabeth Manley (Thomas fell from first place going into the long program to third place overall in the final standings).

By winning the bronze medal, Thomas became the first black athlete to win any medal at the Winter Olympics.

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 placed fifth in the World Championships in 1985 and won gold in 1986.

The eighteen-year-old won the short program and landed four triple jumps to place second in the long program, enough to win the overall competition.

Thomas had also won the U.S. national title besides the World Championship that year; these achievements earned Thomas the ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year award that year.

She is the 1986 World champion, the 1988 Olympic bronze medalist, and a two-time U.S. national champion.

In 1986, she received a Candace Award for Trailblazing from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women.

In 1987, Thomas suffered with Achilles tendinitis in both ankles and struggled at the U.S. Nationals, placing second to Jill Trenary.

She rebounded at the World Championships, finishing a close second to East German skater Katarina Witt.

Thomas relocated to Boulder, Colorado, in the winter of 1987–88 to prepare for the Olympics.

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 January 1988, she reclaimed the U.S. national title.

At the 1988 Winter Olympics held in Calgary, she and Katarina Witt engaged in a rivalry that the media dubbed the "Battle of the Carmens", as both women skated their long programs to the music of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen.

Thomas' Carmen program consisted of "big powerful jumps", fast spins in strong positions, Spanish steps that were sharply accented, an uplifted torso, and straight, clean lines as expressed in her arms and legs.

According to figure skater writer and historian Ellyn Kestnbaum, Thomas presented in her program an outer-directed focus and the image of a powerful and confident woman "taking command of the space around her by moving forth into it".

In Thomas' short program, she used techno dance music and wore "a form-fitting skirtless unitard that showed off both her long lines and her musculature".

It also included "big jumps", as well as "a high-energy step sequence involving angled limbs, shoulder isolations, and syncopated rhythms".

Kestnabum suggests that Thomas' use of contemporary urban dance forms in her short program evoked images of her African American culture and heritage.

Thomas skated strong compulsory figures and performed well in the short program to an instrumental version of "Something in My House" by Dead or Alive.

In her free skating program, she made mistakes on a number of jumps and placed fourth in that segment of the competition.

Thomas won the bronze medal at the 1988 World Championships and then retired from amateur skating.

She performed for Stars on Ice and won the 1988 World Professional Championships in Landover, Maryland.

She won the title again in both 1989 and 1991.