Skating’s Paper Tiger Trenary Takes Nothing for Granted on the Ice

On paper, she has reached the top.

On paper, she is the heir apparent to Debi Thomas, the inheritor of a U. S. figure skating tradition of excellence that has included shining lights such as Peggy Fleming and Dorothy Hamill.

But Jill Trenary would be the last to assume that the predictions written on paper necessarily reflect the events that will transpire on ice.

Yes, Thomas and Katarina Witt have retired. Yes, Trenary, fourth in women’s figure skating in the Winter Olympics, likely will be the top U. S. woman in the 1992 Games. She might even win the gold medal.

But Trenary, 20, is wary of predictions. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that a doctor predicted Trenary might have trouble ever walking normally again. Never mind skating.

Trenary was involved in one of the more unusual and serious accidents to take place in skating.

It happened three years ago at the Broadmoor Hotel ice rink in Colorado Springs, Colo., where Trenary was preparing for the 1985 Sports Festival.

Taking off on a jump, she found her flight pattern too close to that of Kelly Webster, a fellow skater also practicing a jump. The two collided, with one of Webster’s skates cutting into Trenary’s left calf. All the way to the bone.

There was blood everywhere.

“It was a major setback,” Trenary says, “but I was lucky because it didn’t hit my Achilles’ tendon.”

Two-and-one-half hours of surgery followed. But it was only later--after leaving the hospital, after two months in a cast, after rehabilitation, after putting on her skates and struggling across the ice with her leg still swollen--that Trenary read in an article that doctors had told her father Bob that there was a good chance she would always walk with a limp. Skating was, perhaps, just a pleasant memory.

“I never heard that at the time,” Trenary says. “But it wouldn’t have done any good to tell me. I knew it was bad. I knew it would take time and a lot of physical therapy, but I just knew I would get better. I didn’t have a doubt. But my dad knows me very well. He knew I would fight as hard as I could and that I didn’t need any more negative facts.”

She fought back from the debilitating calf injury to finish fifth in the nationals in 1986, then won at the Sports Festival in Houston. Last year, she finished first at the nationals but failed to defend the title this year, finishing second to Thomas. She then finished fifth in the world championships in Budapest, Hungary.

Next for Trenary, who is just getting back to work after her latest injury (a twisted ankle), is a trip to Burbank where, on Sept. 18, she will headline a benefit exhibition skating show at Pickwick Ice Arena. Four U.S. Olympians and three Olympic team alternates will take part, with the proceeds going to benefit United Cerebral Palsy.

Scheduled to participate are Christopher Bowman of Van Nuys, seventh in the Olympics and fifth in the world championships in ‘88, and the dance team of Susan Wynne and Joe Druar. The Olympic alternates set to skate are Jeri Campbell and the pairs team of Katie Keely and Joe Mero. Thomas has indicated she also might participate.

Trenary also is considering competing in several international events next month. Then she begins the arduous preparations for the ’89 nationals in February and the world championships in March.

“There are a lot of young skaters coming up,” she says. “Nothing is ever handed to you. I’m just taking it year by year. A medal in the World Games is just as big a deal as the Olympics.”