"Tenley Albright, Carol Heiss, Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill, Kristi Yamaguchi, Michelle Kwan and Tara Lipinski. All were pretty girls from middle class backgrounds"
???
Yamaguchi was the only one that I know of that was middle class: Dentist's daughter from CA suburb.
Albright and Tara were definately upper class, Albright being the only Mayflower WASP among them, the Lipinski's being more Texas oil rich. Hughes is also from a boom money family.
Heiss, Fleming and Kwan were all from blue collar ethnic backgrounds (Heiss's parents were immagrants with accents, the complete opposite of Albright's).
Hamill I don't remember anything about.
I think if you look at Heiss, her personality and manerism, and then look at Albright and Vinson, you'll see the source of the comment and how Carol had to play the game and tone down her natural tom-boyishness to be accepted by the media. She definately had looks on her side: I remember a Jim McCabe interview at the 56 Olys where he made a big fuss about her being pretty and asked all her about her costumes, etc... rather than her skating. Totally what we would call sexist today.
I think that Nancy fell prey to the changing times in the way Gary Heart and/or Bill Clinton did. Tons of former presidents misbehaved, but the general public wasn't all up in their face and private business in the blow-by-blow way that the media is today. Hamill could have said a heck of a lot worse than "this is so corney" but we just didn't have it broadcast all over the news 24/7.
Tonya never even pretended to play the game. In fact, she seemed to go out of her way to show the skating world her contempt for thier stupid rules. Maybe she was a pioneer, or mayb she was just a typical person with fear of sucess, throwing obsticles in her own way.
