Debra Janine Thomas was born on March 25,1967 and is an American former figure skater and physician.
30 Facts About Debi Thomas
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Debi Thomas is the 1986 World champion, the 1988 Olympic bronze medalist, and a two-time US national champion.
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Debi Thomas was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, and grew up in San Jose, California.
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Debi Thomas's mother worked as a computer programming analyst in Sunnyvale, California.
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Debi Thomas competed in her first figure skating competition at age 9, finishing in first place.
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At age 10, Debi Thomas was introduced to Scottish skating coach Alex McGowan.
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Debi Thomas placed fifth in the World Championships in 1985 and won gold in 1986.
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Debi Thomas had won the US national title besides the World Championship that year; these achievements earned Debi Thomas the ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year award that year.
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Debi Thomas was the first female athlete to win those titles while attending college full-time since Tenley Albright in the 1950s.
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Debi Thomas was the first African-American to hold US National titles in ladies' singles figure skating.
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Debi Thomas was a pre-med student at Stanford University during this time, although it was unusual for a top US skater to go to college at the same time as competing.
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In 1987, Debi Thomas suffered with Achilles tendinitis in both ankles and struggled at the US Nationals, placing second to Jill Trenary.
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Debi Thomas rebounded at the World Championships, finishing a close second to East German skater Katarina Witt.
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Debi 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.
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Debi Thomas began with a triple toe-triple toe combination, which was rare for a female skater in the 1980s.
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The second triple was not perfect and by her own admission, Debi Thomas gave up on the rest of the program.
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Debi Thomas won the bronze medal at the 1988 World Championships and then retired from amateur skating.
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Debi Thomas performed for Stars on Ice and won the 1988 World Professional Championships in Landover, Maryland.
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Debi Thomas won the title again in both 1989 and 1991.
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In February 1989, Debi Thomas ranked 12th in the Q Score athlete standings, the only woman in the top 22.
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Debi Thomas was inducted into the US Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2000.
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Debi Thomas was selected by President George W Bush to be part of the US Delegation for the Opening Ceremonies of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy along with other former Olympians: Dorothy Hamill, Eric Heiden, Kerri Strug, and Herschel Walker.
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Debi Thomas returned to the ice briefly to participate in "The Caesars Tribute: A Salute to the Golden Age of American Skating", an event which featured many of the greatest legends and icons of American figure skating.
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Debi Thomas expressed interest in becoming a doctor from an early age.
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Debi Thomas graduated from Stanford in 1991 with a degree in engineering and then from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in 1997.
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Debi Thomas followed this with a surgical residency at the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences Hospital and an orthopedic surgery residency at the Martin Luther King Jr.
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Debi Thomas went on to become a practicing orthopedic surgeon specializing in hip and knee replacement.
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Debi Thomas spent the next year preparing for Step I of the American Board of Orthopedic Surgeons' exam and working at King-Drew Medical Center as a junior-attending-physician specialist.
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Debi Thomas stated that she was "broke", having lost most of her savings through her two divorces and failed medical practice, and had lost custody of her son when he was 13.
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Debi Thomas was featured in the November 7,2015, episode of the television series Iyanla: Fix My Life on the Oprah Winfrey Network.