20 Facts About Janet Lynn

Janet Lynn Nowicki was born on April 6,1953 and is an American figure skater.

Janet Lynn is the 1972 Olympic bronze medalist, a two-time world championships medalist, and a seven-time US national champion.

Janet Lynn used her middle name Lynn instead of Nowicki, which was constantly being misspelled and mispronounced.

Janet Lynn was always forthright about the name change; in her own mind her name was still Nowicki.

Janet Lynn placed 9th at her first World Championships in 1968.

Janet Lynn won her first senior national title at the 1969 US Figure Skating Championships.

Janet Lynn then finished 5th at the World Championships despite the absence of both Magnussen and Czechoslovakia's Hana Maskova due to injuries.

Janet Lynn fell behind Julie Lynn Holmes, whom she had beaten for the national title, while Gabriele Seyfert of East Germany took the gold medal.

At the 1970 World Championships, Seyfert and Austria's Trixi Schuba were again in 1st and 2nd place, while Holmes moved up to 3rd and Janet Lynn finished in 6th.

Janet Lynn made an effort to remedy this weakness by working with the great New York-based coach Pierre Brunet, who had previously had World Champions Carol Heiss and Donald Jackson under his tutelage.

In 1972, Janet Lynn beat Holmes for the national title for the fourth year in a row, and there were widespread predictions that she would take World and Olympic gold, especially because of Schuba's weakness in free skating.

At the 1972 Winter Olympics at Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan, Janet Lynn placed 4th in the compulsory figures while Schuba established a large lead in the segment.

Janet Lynn decided to continue competing and took her fifth National title in 1973.

At the 1973 World Championships, Janet Lynn skated her best figures ever, taking 2nd in that discipline, but in the newly introduced short program of required jumps and spins, which she had been expected to win, two falls landed her in 12th position.

Janet Lynn won the free skate and moved up to take the silver medal in the final event of her amateur career.

Janet Lynn's popularity was such that the Ice Follies offered her a three-year contract for $1,455,000, which made her the highest-paid female professional athlete of the time.

Janet Lynn again appeared in Button's professional competitions and co-starred with John Curry in his made-for-TV ice ballet, "The Snow Queen".

Since compulsory figures were rarely televised and were not well understood by the general public, television audiences were confused and angry when skaters such as Janet Lynn, who excelled in the free skate, consistently lost competitions to skaters such as Schuba and Duba, who were not as strong in the free skate.

Janet Lynn was known as one of figure skating's early pioneers of women's triple jumps, but she was well known for her "musical expressiveness, graceful movement, and the almost ethereal quality of her skating".

Janet Lynn has been credited with the introduction of the short program in singles skating, the increase in the value of the free skating program, and the eventual devaluing of compulsive figures.