January 16, 2026 • 9 mins
Competition can make you or break you… and it’s not always your call. We watch the skaters at the Winter Olympics and marvel at the pristine beauty and flawless execution. But what goes on behind the scenes and in the aftermath… can be a way more compelling story.
Feel free to DM me if you have a story you’d like me to cover. On Facebook it’s Patty Steele, and on Instagram, Real Patty Steele.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What is it about competition? I mean, we humans can
be so incredibly competitive, and as the Winter Olympics get
underway in a few weeks, we also see how competitive
nations are about their athletes as well. The most watched
sport of the Winter Games is figure skating. As beautiful
as it is behind the scenes, it has one of
(00:21):
the most dog eat dog dynamics of any sport. But
we all love the drama. Right, I'm Patty Steele. The
drive to win on the ice. That's next on the backstory.
We're back with the backstory. First of all, thanks to
my pal and uber skating fan Sue Aller for suggesting
(00:42):
this story. Ah the beauty of somebody flying across the ice,
defying gravity and making it look so effortless, But that
perfection is hard won. Figure skaters, men, women pairs spend
hours a day, month after month, for years on end
to make it look effortless. It's not unusual for them
(01:04):
to train a minimum of forty hours a week for
as much as fifteen years before hitting the elite level.
So whenever people want success so much, they can taste
it when they basically give up their young lives to
train for it. When their countries see them as a
symbol of their power. You can imagine there's also plenty
of behind the scenes scandal. The movie I Tanya, of Course,
(01:26):
told the story of the lead up to the nineteen
ninety four Winter Olympics. In January of that year, as
Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan were getting ready for the
US Figure Skating Championships. The next day, cohorts of Tanya's
attacked Nancy with a pipe, smashing her just above her knee.
It was all in an effort to eliminate Nancy from
(01:47):
the Championships and the Olympics to give Tanya a better
shot at the goal. The attacks severely bruised Nancy's leg
but broke nothing, and both Tanya and Nancy were selected
for the Olympic team that year. Eventually, the attacker confessed
and implicated Tanya. While she did skate in the Olympics,
she came in eighth. She later pleaded guilty to finding
(02:08):
out about the attack afterwards and helping cover it up.
There were further investigations that show she probably knew about
the attack ahead of time and even helped finance it,
but her plea deal protected her from facing any other charges.
She was banned from skating and coaching for life. But
there was another scandal on ice a few years earlier,
(02:30):
it seems Russia. Previously, the Soviet Union has regularly been
at the heart of the competitive drive to win when
it comes to figure skating, as well at the center
of some major scandals. They've been charged with doping their
athletes a number of times. Let's go back to nineteen
eighty eight and the Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada for
(02:50):
a story of heartbreak and scandal. Here's the thing. The
Olympics likes to sell a simple story, the best athlete wins,
but sometimes that's a little bit of a lie. It's
way more complicated than that. In Calgary, the women's figure
skating final was not just a competition. It was a
collision of dreams, pressure, and invisible lines of power. Three
(03:14):
women stepped onto the ice with everything to gain but
also everything to lose. Canada's Elizabeth Manley, Debbie Thomas from
the United States, and Katerina Vitt from East Germany part
of the USSR. We'll start with Debbie Thomas. She wasn't
just skating for a medal, she was skating for representation,
and she carried the added weight of being the first
(03:35):
black woman in a sport that had rarely allowed women
of color in. But she was a two time US
national champ. Her athletic excellence was unmatched, and the battle
for the gold was considered a toss up between Debbie
and Caterineavit. Debbie also carried into the competition her Ivy
League brain. While training for the Olympics, she was in
(03:57):
the pre med program at Stanford. During the long skate portion,
the media hyped the competition when both Debbie and Katerina
chose to skate to the music of the opera Carmen.
Both did well, but Debbie was in elite. Going into
the free skate portion of the competition, Debbie was in
first place. She had four minutes on the ice to
(04:18):
prove herself. She was required to do five triples with
razor sharp perfection. She nailed the first, but wobbled the
tiniest bit on the second, and just like that, her
momentum slipped. Every triple that followed was overshadowed by that
single imperfection. She fought, she pushed, but ultimately she left
(04:39):
the ice with bronze. Next up came Elizabeth Manley. She
was Countada's underdog, the skater who had collapsed in training
just two months before the games from exhaustion, pain and fear.
But her fire would ignite on the ice. She skated
like somebody who had nothing to lose. Four clean triples.
She was sharp and wildly fast, with an energy that
(05:02):
crackled like electricity. The crowd went nuts, the judges whispered
amongst themselves, and for a moment it felt like the
impossible was going to happen, like Elizabeth had stolen history.
Then katterine A Vit glided onto the ice. She was
the defending champ, a masterpiece of East Germany's sports machine.
(05:23):
Every movement had been rehearsed, engineered, and polished to perfection.
Vitt's performance included five triples, but she only executed four
of them. Though she did them flawlessly, she made the
choice not to do the fifth. It wasn't about her brilliance,
but about control. No mistakes, no drama, no vulnerability. For Vitt,
(05:46):
a slip up on a fifth wouldn't have been just
a mistake. It would have been a political failure. East
Germany's prestige in a tricky political world rested on her shoulders.
Winning was non negotiable. Judges heavily weighted toward the Eastern
Soviet Bloc came to any inevitable conclusion. Even though Elizabeth
(06:07):
Manning was technically superior, the gold went to Katerinavitt and
the silver to Elizabeth Manley. So it wasn't about who
was best, but who was protected by the system. What
if the post Olympic gears looked like for these women?
A Katerine Avitt continued to skate as an amateur and
later on the pro circuit. She wrote an autobiography. She's
(06:30):
acted in a number of TV shows and films, and
in nineteen ninety eight she posed nude in Playboy magazine,
leading to a sellout of that issue. She wanted to
prove that skaters were not just little ice princesses. Elizabeth
Manley's exquisite performance and her silver medal made her a
national hero in Canada. She went on to skate professionally
(06:53):
and is now a figure skating coach as well as
a spokesperson for Mental health Awareness. Having suffered from depression
from many years and Debbie Thomas's life post Olympics has
run an unimaginable gamut. Maybe worthy of a movie. I
think this brilliant and gifted woman graduated from Stanford with
an engineering degree and went on to medical school, ultimately
(07:16):
becoming an orthopedic surgeon. She was married twice, including once
to a sports attorney with whom she had a son,
but an ongoing battle with bipolar disorder eventually destroyed her
career and her personal life. In twenty fifteen, she was
living in a bedbug infested trailer with fiance who was
an alcoholic with anger issues. She had lost custody of
(07:40):
her son, and she said she had lost all of
her money. Now, on a brighter note, she's now living
and training in Florida, and she hopes to get back
into the skating world in some way. So determination, brilliance,
and breathtaking talent doesn't always protect you from life's difficulties,
and what goes on behind the scenes can be way
(08:01):
more complex than what we see on our TV screens.
Thanks again to my pal in major Skating Van, Sue Aller,
for suggesting this story. I hope you're enjoying the backstory
with Patty Steele. Please leave a review and follow or
subscribe for free to get new episodes delivered automatically. Also
feel free to DM me if, like Sue, you have
(08:21):
a story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's
Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele.
The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis
Duran Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser.
(08:44):
Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday
and Friday. Feel free to reach out to me with
comments and even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty
Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening
to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces of history
you didn't know you needed to know.
What is it about competition? I mean, we humans can
be so incredibly competitive, and as the Winter Olympics get
underway in a few weeks, we also see how competitive
nations are about their athletes as well. The most watched
sport of the Winter Games is figure skating. As beautiful
as it is behind the scenes, it has one of
(00:21):
the most dog eat dog dynamics of any sport. But
we all love the drama. Right, I'm Patty Steele. The
drive to win on the ice. That's next on the backstory.
We're back with the backstory. First of all, thanks to
my pal and uber skating fan Sue Aller for suggesting
(00:42):
this story. Ah the beauty of somebody flying across the ice,
defying gravity and making it look so effortless, But that
perfection is hard won. Figure skaters, men, women pairs spend
hours a day, month after month, for years on end
to make it look effortless. It's not unusual for them
(01:04):
to train a minimum of forty hours a week for
as much as fifteen years before hitting the elite level.
So whenever people want success so much, they can taste
it when they basically give up their young lives to
train for it. When their countries see them as a
symbol of their power. You can imagine there's also plenty
of behind the scenes scandal. The movie I Tanya, of Course,
(01:26):
told the story of the lead up to the nineteen
ninety four Winter Olympics. In January of that year, as
Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan were getting ready for the
US Figure Skating Championships. The next day, cohorts of Tanya's
attacked Nancy with a pipe, smashing her just above her knee.
It was all in an effort to eliminate Nancy from
(01:47):
the Championships and the Olympics to give Tanya a better
shot at the goal. The attacks severely bruised Nancy's leg
but broke nothing, and both Tanya and Nancy were selected
for the Olympic team that year. Eventually, the attacker confessed
and implicated Tanya. While she did skate in the Olympics,
she came in eighth. She later pleaded guilty to finding
(02:08):
out about the attack afterwards and helping cover it up.
There were further investigations that show she probably knew about
the attack ahead of time and even helped finance it,
but her plea deal protected her from facing any other charges.
She was banned from skating and coaching for life. But
there was another scandal on ice a few years earlier,
(02:30):
it seems Russia. Previously, the Soviet Union has regularly been
at the heart of the competitive drive to win when
it comes to figure skating, as well at the center
of some major scandals. They've been charged with doping their
athletes a number of times. Let's go back to nineteen
eighty eight and the Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada for
(02:50):
a story of heartbreak and scandal. Here's the thing. The
Olympics likes to sell a simple story, the best athlete wins,
but sometimes that's a little bit of a lie. It's
way more complicated than that. In Calgary, the women's figure
skating final was not just a competition. It was a
collision of dreams, pressure, and invisible lines of power. Three
(03:14):
women stepped onto the ice with everything to gain but
also everything to lose. Canada's Elizabeth Manley, Debbie Thomas from
the United States, and Katerina Vitt from East Germany part
of the USSR. We'll start with Debbie Thomas. She wasn't
just skating for a medal, she was skating for representation,
and she carried the added weight of being the first
(03:35):
black woman in a sport that had rarely allowed women
of color in. But she was a two time US
national champ. Her athletic excellence was unmatched, and the battle
for the gold was considered a toss up between Debbie
and Caterineavit. Debbie also carried into the competition her Ivy
League brain. While training for the Olympics, she was in
(03:57):
the pre med program at Stanford. During the long skate portion,
the media hyped the competition when both Debbie and Katerina
chose to skate to the music of the opera Carmen.
Both did well, but Debbie was in elite. Going into
the free skate portion of the competition, Debbie was in
first place. She had four minutes on the ice to
(04:18):
prove herself. She was required to do five triples with
razor sharp perfection. She nailed the first, but wobbled the
tiniest bit on the second, and just like that, her
momentum slipped. Every triple that followed was overshadowed by that
single imperfection. She fought, she pushed, but ultimately she left
(04:39):
the ice with bronze. Next up came Elizabeth Manley. She
was Countada's underdog, the skater who had collapsed in training
just two months before the games from exhaustion, pain and fear.
But her fire would ignite on the ice. She skated
like somebody who had nothing to lose. Four clean triples.
She was sharp and wildly fast, with an energy that
(05:02):
crackled like electricity. The crowd went nuts, the judges whispered
amongst themselves, and for a moment it felt like the
impossible was going to happen, like Elizabeth had stolen history.
Then katterine A Vit glided onto the ice. She was
the defending champ, a masterpiece of East Germany's sports machine.
(05:23):
Every movement had been rehearsed, engineered, and polished to perfection.
Vitt's performance included five triples, but she only executed four
of them. Though she did them flawlessly, she made the
choice not to do the fifth. It wasn't about her brilliance,
but about control. No mistakes, no drama, no vulnerability. For Vitt,
(05:46):
a slip up on a fifth wouldn't have been just
a mistake. It would have been a political failure. East
Germany's prestige in a tricky political world rested on her shoulders.
Winning was non negotiable. Judges heavily weighted toward the Eastern
Soviet Bloc came to any inevitable conclusion. Even though Elizabeth
(06:07):
Manning was technically superior, the gold went to Katerinavitt and
the silver to Elizabeth Manley. So it wasn't about who
was best, but who was protected by the system. What
if the post Olympic gears looked like for these women?
A Katerine Avitt continued to skate as an amateur and
later on the pro circuit. She wrote an autobiography. She's
(06:30):
acted in a number of TV shows and films, and
in nineteen ninety eight she posed nude in Playboy magazine,
leading to a sellout of that issue. She wanted to
prove that skaters were not just little ice princesses. Elizabeth
Manley's exquisite performance and her silver medal made her a
national hero in Canada. She went on to skate professionally
(06:53):
and is now a figure skating coach as well as
a spokesperson for Mental health Awareness. Having suffered from depression
from many years and Debbie Thomas's life post Olympics has
run an unimaginable gamut. Maybe worthy of a movie. I
think this brilliant and gifted woman graduated from Stanford with
an engineering degree and went on to medical school, ultimately
(07:16):
becoming an orthopedic surgeon. She was married twice, including once
to a sports attorney with whom she had a son,
but an ongoing battle with bipolar disorder eventually destroyed her
career and her personal life. In twenty fifteen, she was
living in a bedbug infested trailer with fiance who was
an alcoholic with anger issues. She had lost custody of
(07:40):
her son, and she said she had lost all of
her money. Now, on a brighter note, she's now living
and training in Florida, and she hopes to get back
into the skating world in some way. So determination, brilliance,
and breathtaking talent doesn't always protect you from life's difficulties,
and what goes on behind the scenes can be way
(08:01):
more complex than what we see on our TV screens.
Thanks again to my pal in major Skating Van, Sue Aller,
for suggesting this story. I hope you're enjoying the backstory
with Patty Steele. Please leave a review and follow or
subscribe for free to get new episodes delivered automatically. Also
feel free to DM me if, like Sue, you have
(08:21):
a story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's
Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele.
The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis
Duran Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser.
(08:44):
Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday
and Friday. Feel free to reach out to me with
comments and even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty
Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening
to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces of history
you didn't know you needed to know.
Host
Patty Steele
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