Debi Thomas : U.S., World Champion Skates With Surgical Precision

There are times, Debi Thomas agrees, when she is ready to give up everything “and become a bum.”

Considering the onerous workload she has imposed upon herself, it is a wonder she doesn’t yield to the temptation. Instead, bearing a brave soul and bright smile, she plunges harder and deeper into her formidable schedule.

“My dream is to not fall apart,” Thomas said. “I hope I can handle all the pressure. In the past I’ve been able to use pressure to my advantage, and I tell myself if I’ve done it before I can do it again.”

At the age of 19, Thomas is the reigning United States and world champion figure skater, and it can be reasonably assumed that if she maintains her position through the 1988 Olympics, she would be in line for some lucrative professional contracts.

Instead of taking what would be a pleasurable and profitable way out by devoting all her energy to sport, however, Thomas also is a pre-med student at Stanford, with the goal of working as an orthopedic surgeon. So, although the first big competition of the season, Skate America, is coming up in mid-October at Portland, Maine, Thomas has been devoting most of her recent time to studying for two organic chemistry finals that were carried over from her freshman year.

“I’ll never give up one to concentrate on the other,” she said. “If I give up, I’ll give up on everything and just become a bum. But I want to do the whole thing. That’s the way I am.

“School has helped me and given me a sense of stability. If skating doesn’t go, I’ll always have a backup.”

How she is able to overachieve, and at such a level of excellence, may have been explained Sept. 22 when Thomas received the Amateur Sportswoman of the Year award from the Women’s Sports Foundation. Speaking to a celebrity-filled audience at a gala dinner, Thomas said, “I wonder how I can get through it all, but things keep coming together for me at the end. I keep telling myself that and maybe I’ll believe it.”

Thomas, a native of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., who lives in San Jose, failed to qualify for the United States Olympic team two years ago. But she upset defending champion Tiffany Chin at the Nationals last February, landing all five of her triple jumps in the freestyle program, and the following month she won the world title at Geneva, Switzerland, this time upsetting East German Katarina Witt, the reigning Olympic and two-time world champion.

The big objective now for Thomas is the 1988 Olympics at Calgary, which could mark the end of her amateur career except possibly for another shot at the worlds the following month. Depending on the situation, she might skate professionally on a limited basis, although her ultimate career goal is to complete her medical degree and open a training center in the Bay Area.

Thomas refers to the summer as “a yucky part of year” because “nothing is really happening,” and despite all the work to be done she looks forward to the start of school and of skating. She frets about keeping up with her schoolwork, and she knows she’ll be an emotional wreck before each competition. It’s a feeling she anticipates with glee.

“You have to be mentally tough to be able to handle those kind of pressures,” she said. “At every competition I feel I’ll never do this again, then I go out and skate and feel great and say ‘get me the next one.’ It’s an obsession.

“At 10 I always thought the nerves would go away, but they don’t. The butterflies are always there. Now I try to use the nerves as energy to help me.”