Dorothy Hamill

Dorothy Hamill married and divorced twice. Her marriage to singer cum actor Dean Paul Martin lasted from 1982 to 1984 and that with her second husband, Kenneth Forsythe, from 1987 to 1995. She got married for a third time to John MacColl in 2009. She has a daughter, Alexandra, from her second marriage, with whom she lived in Baltimore, Maryland for some time.

For much of her adult life she was suffering from depression for which she was under medical treatment. She also had to be treated for breast cancer in 2008. Her daughter is also known to suffer from depression.

Dorothy Hamill was born on Jul 26, 1956 in Chicago, Illinois, to Chalmers and Carol Hamill. Her father was a mechanical engineer who was known to be a heavy drinker. Shortly after her birth, her family moved to the Riverside neighbourhood of Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was brought up. She was a shy child with an elder brother and sister.

She learnt to skate with her siblings on her grandparents’ pond at an early age. Her parents recognised her potential and allowed her to take lessons at the age of eight to improve her technique, including skating backwards. This was despite not being close to her mother and having difficult relations with her parents.

She became serious about her sport and began to practice at 4:30 AM every morning in order to pass her preliminaries and first figure skating test. Her father spent a large fortune on her training.

She was first coached by Otto Gold and Gustave Lussi. Due to limited ice time in her hometown she ultimately trained at the Sky Rink in New York City. She also trained in Lake Placid, New York and later in Toronto.

She attended public school in Riverside until the spring of 1970 and then switched to a small school with flexible timings in order to accommodate her skating schedule. Finally she graduated from Colorado Academy high school.

Hamill’s first national success came when she won the novices ladies’ title at the US Championship in 1969 at the age of 12. Later that spring she was invited to perform in Madison Square Garden with the exhibition tour that later came to be known as ‘Champions on Ice’.

She was second in the 1970 junior level US championship and made her senior debut in 1971. She was US champion from 1974 to 1976. The US Figure Skating Association recognised her talent and arranged for her to be coached by Carlo Fassi when she began to compete internationally.

Dorothy made her big breakthrough when she won the silver medal at the World Championship in Munich, Germany in 1974. She again won the silver medal at the World Championship in Colorado Springs in 1975.

At the age of 19 she won the gold medal at the 1976 Winter Olympic Games at Innsbruck, Austria. Shortly after this she went on to win the World Championship title at Gothenburg, Sweden and then went professional. She was the last single skater to win the Olympics without a triple jump.

From1977 to 1984 she toured extensively with the show ‘Ice Capades’. She also produced and starred in her own touring productions, including ‘Cinderella’ and ‘The Nutcracker’.

She released her book, ‘On and Off the Ice’ in 1983.

In 2007 Dorothy Hamill published her autobiography, ‘A Skating Life: My Story’.

She also acted in the movies ‘The Dorothy Hamill Special’ (1976); ‘Dorothy Hamill Presents Winners’ (1978), and, ‘A Tribute to George and Ira Gershwin: A Memory of All That’ (1998)