The Long Program: Skating Toward Life's Victories - Hardcover

Fleming, Peggy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671038869 ISBN 13: 9780671038861

Publisher: Atria, 1999

Synopsis

In all of her roles -- athlete, wife, mother, role model, and cancer survivor -- Olympic gold medalist Peggy Fleming has relied upon the discipline she cultivated as a young skater. Now in this intimate memoir, she eloquently reveals her fascinating life story and shares her secrets to serenity and success. In 1968 -- the first year the Olympic Winter Games were televised live and in color -- the nation anxiously watched a teenaged girl in a chartreuse dress deliver a breathtaking free-skating program. Her performance not only captured the United States' only winter gold medal, but a country's collective heart as well. It was our introduction to Peggy Fleming. A young woman who embodied both stunning athleticism and magnificent grace, Peggy Fleming became an instant celebrity. Yet, as this shy and reclusive California tomboy discloses, she was anything but comfortable in the public eye. She was only a gawky twelve-year-old when she began to reenergize the sport after the entire U.S. Figure Skating team -- including Peggy's coach -- was lost in a plane crash. Peggy reveals how she developed an inner strength that allowed her to conquer doubt and fear, and how that strength stayed with her after the Olympics. She also describes how, in the decades that followed, she found great joy and balance in her life -- sharing her knowledge and insight as an on-air analyst for ABC Sports (for eighteen years and counting), and maintaining a long-standing marriage that has given her two delightful sons. But Peggy's toughest challenge came thirty years after she won the gold medal. In 1998, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Here, Peggy candidly details her courageous physical and emotional battle. She also explains how she ultimately prevailed, and why she felt it necessary to become an outspoken, highly visible promoter of breast cancer awareness. Through it all, Peggy always maintained poise, confidence, and her acute sense of self. Demonstrating why these attributes are essential to achieving any goal, she relates how every person's life has its own version of a long program, those precious years that take little girls and turn them into wives, mothers, grandmas, and survivors. And she shows how making a plan and then reacting to the twists and turns of reality is what skating is all about and what life is all about. A compelling memoir that deserves the highest marks, The Long Program is both a portrait of a remarkable woman, and a collection of inspiring lessons on how each of us can be our

About this title

About the Author:

Peggy Fleming has won five U.S. figure skating titles, three World titles, and an Olympic gold medal. In 1994, Sports Illustrated named her one of their "40 for the Ages -- 40 individuals who have most significantly altered or elevated the world of sports in the last 40 years." She was the only figure skater and one of four women chosen. She continues to work as an on-air analyst for ABC Sports and has become a national spokesperson for breast cancer awareness. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband and two sons.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter One: Confidence

If you had seen me in my early years, you would have had a hard time picking out the graceful skater that I worked very hard to become. If you first met me as an Olympic athlete or on a television special in a wispy costume gliding along ice as polished as a diamond, you probably think that I glide through life with my own personal symphony playing Mozart or Haydn, as I go to the supermarket or have the oil changed on my four-wheel drive.

Not quite.

The real me, the me before Peggy the Skater, was a scrawny, shy tomboy afraid to look in the mirror. It took many years for me even to recognize myself in the Peggy Fleming that the rest of the world sees. No matter how far any of us go in life, inside each of us is the kid we started out as.

If you had dropped into my fourth-grade class, you would have had a hard time picking out the future Olympic champion. In fact, you would have had a hard time picking me out at all. I was so shy that I usually scrunched myself into my chair in the back row hoping not to attract any attention at all. I was the kid who prayed the teacher never called on her, the one who never raised her hand.

I was desperately in need of confidence, especially in social situations. Like many other awkward children, it was only in the physical side of life that I began to find that confidence. Skating was the thing that eventually made everything else fall into place, but I was ready for skating when I discovered it only because I had spent years being physically active.

When I got outdoors, I felt free. When I got outdoors, I didn't mind attracting attention. If I were playing on the monkey bars, I would try the scariest, hardest tricks. It didn't matter that I had a permanent case of blisters on my hands or that my knees required a daily application of Band-Aids. That was the price I was willing to pay for showing off physically. The same thing was true when I began to play baseball. I was proud of how fast I ran the bases, how far I hit the ball, and how I could field and throw as well as the boys.

My mom and dad were both physically active, and they both loved the out-of-doors. Lucky for them: Fresh air and sunshine are free and abundant in California, and they couldn't have afforded much more. They always had to scramble to make ends meet, but I never knew about that. Kids rarely do.

My mom, Doris Deal, met my dad, Al Fleming, while she was waitressing at a restaurant in the Bay Area. The restaurant was a cutesy thing built inside a windmill. One afternoon she was serving a group of marines who were having a high old time. Among them was a powerfully built man with Irish good looks who had just been discharged from the corps.

My dad remembers that his eyes took in what my mom would later refer to as her "assets," and he told his buddies, "I am going to marry that girl." He did, and my three sisters and I are the results.

A lot has been written about how my mother shaped my career, but it was my dad who first got me into skating. He was not a simple man: He could be loving, full of high spirits, and always ready for a good time, but at other times his face could darken and he could get angry in a scary way. His background -- a strict Catholic upbringing followed by marine corps training -- tells the story of one side of his character: a lot of repression.

Having five women around our house was more than he knew how to handle. His response, when it wasn't just to have fun, was to be strict. For example, when we were teenagers just starting to think about looking womanly, he was totally against makeup or even a hint of glamour in his daughters. I would spend hours putting on makeup that I thought would look discreet enough that Dad would never notice. But I would make it only to the bottom of the stairs and Dad would take one look and send me back up to the bathroom to take it off. Of course, I'd stash all my makeup in my bag, and on the way to whatever party I was going to, I'd put lipstick and eyeliner on in the car. As my husband, Greg, will be the first to tell you, the big difference in me as a grownup is that now I openly put my makeup on in the bathroom, then I still work on it in the car.

The war experience marked my dad, which affected all of us in the family. A Japanese grenade landed on his tank and killed most of his friends. It smashed his leg up and he had to have a metal plate put in. He also came down with malaria, and I remember his screams when the fever came on strong. Mom would close the door so we wouldn't hear, but closing doors in houses rarely accomplishes much: Everybody knows what's going on.

My dad's way of dealing with this was to be as happy-go-lucky as possible -- with plenty of help from his buddies and the bottle. Drinking was also an occupational hazard in his line of work: He was a pressman in the newspaper business. You see, you'd run a loud press all day and you'd pretty much need to blow off steam at the end of the shift with your friends. You'd drink and you'd smoke, and my dad did both -- which is probably why he had three heart attacks before his final and fatal one at the age of forty one.

But in the beginning he and Mom were two young lovers starting out life in the golden sun of California. They built themselves a family pretty rapidly. First, my sister Janice was born in 1947, and then I came along in '48. They named me Peggy partly because the doctor in the labor and delivery room was singing "Peg O' My Heart" during my mom's labor. After me, Maxine showed up in '51 and Cathy in '54. Cathy was born on my birthday, and I always said I didn't get a party for my birthday, I got a sister instead.

They didn't have hippies then, but in a way my folks were early hippies. My mom quit college, to the great disapproval of her mother. In 1946, Doris and Al Fleming bought ten acres of land in Morgan Hill and built our house with their own hands. Dad had a job then at the San Jose Mercury News, one of many jobs that he would hold as we moved from town to town and from home to home. I am so glad that I have those early memories of that little farm. Those memories are a safe haven that I can return to in my mind when I need to put my life in perspective.

We had chickens on the farm as well as cows and horses, including an old mare and a young stallion that hadn't been broken when we got him. We used to ride the mare, sometimes two girls at a time, and I thought Dad was a real swashbuckler when he broke that stallion all by himself. We had a pig too, which I thought of as mine.

Maybe you can look into this portrait of a childhood and see the outlines of my Olympic future, but when I remember those days -- especially the pig -- I see Peggy Fleming, future spokeswoman for the National Pork Producers Council (one of the jobs I would hold later in my career as an endorser and a star of commercials).

I loved that pig, but, our Doberman pinscher, whom I also loved, didn't.

One afternoon, for no apparent reason other than the basic nature of Dobermans, he jumped the barnyard fence and killed the pig. I cried as much as a little girl can cry, but that was just the beginning. Mom and Dad were afraid that the Doberman had become a danger; if it could attack the pig, it might attack one of us. Dad took his gun, went way out into a field so we wouldn't hear or see, and shot the dog. Not only had I lost my pet pig but we lost the family dog, too.

I didn't pine for too long. Mom and Dad liked sports and games as much as I did, or at least they pretended that they did, and they encouraged my sisters and me to go outside and enjoy ourselves. We were so into games that I remember the summer flying by one year in the late fifties. We were low on funds and the Fleming sisters camped by a lake with my mom while Dad went back to the Midwest to look for

About this edition

• Publisher: Atria
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0671038869
• ISBN 13: 9780671038861
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224