Amelon and Binnie Honored by the USOC as Good Skates

Two ice dancers discovered last year that they couldn’t give their medals away, but as far as the United States Olympic Committee was concerned, it was the thought that counted.

The USOC presented the 1985 Jack Kelly Fair Play Award Saturday in Los Angeles to the ice dancing team of Kandi Amelon of Southfield, Mich., and Alec Binnie of Des Moines, Iowa.

Amelon, 21, attends UCLA. Binnie, 23, plans to enroll soon at UCLA.

Also honored Saturday by the USOC were triple jumper Willie Banks as the Sportsman of the Year and middle-distance runner Mary Decker Slaney as the Sportswoman of the Year.

The athletes received their awards during the second day of the USOC’s House of Delegates meeting, which ends today.

Amelon and Binnie were in fourth place entering the final free-dance competition last year at their first international competition, the Golden Spin of Zagreb in Zagreb, Yugoslavia.

But in warming up before the competition began, the Hungarian team, which was in third place, collided with the first-place team from West Germany.

The Hungarian woman, Klara Enghi, suffered a gash above her cheekbone, believed at first to be a broken jaw, and was unable to continue in the competition.

After winning bronze medals they believed would have been earned by the Hungarians if not for the freak accident, the Americans decided at a banquet that evening to give their medals to the Hungarian man, Attila Toth.

But after the Yugoslavian public address announcer related the incident to the audience, a Hungarian referee returned the medals to the Americans, explaining that it is against international skating rules for those winning medals to present them to competitors.

The Soviet Union’s team leader, however, gave the American team a Soviet flag and a medallion in recognition of the ice dancers’ sportsmanship.

Amelon and Binnie since have retired from the sport.