Carol Heiss
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Carol Heiss Jenkins (born January 20 1940) was a World and Olympic figure skating Champion.
In 1956, at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany, Carol Heiss won the first of her five consecutive World Figure Skating Championships. That year she also earned a Silver Medal at the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy where her US teammate Tenley Albright took the Gold.
Heiss first came to National Prominence in 1951 when she was U.S. Novice Ladies' Champion at age 11. She won the U.S. Junior Ladies in 1952, and then moved up to the Senior level in 1953. In 1953-1956, she finished at the Nationals to Albright, with her 1956 performance qualifying her for the Olympic team.
After the 1956 Winter Olympics, Heiss had offers to turn professional and skate in ice shows. But her mother, Marie Heiss, was quite ill with cancer at the time. Her mother died in October 1956 and asked Carol to stay an amateur to win a gold medal for her. Between 1957 and 1960, Carol Heiss dominated women's figure skating like nobody since Sonja Henie. She was U.S. and World Champion every year, and at the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California, Heiss captured the Gold Medal, being ranked first by all nine judges.
Following her retirement from figure skating in 1960, Heiss played the female lead in the 1961 film Snow White and the Three Stooges. She also married Hayes Alan Jenkins, who had won the 1956 Winter Olympic gold medal in men's figure skating, and whose brother David Jenkins, had won the men's figure skating gold medal in 1960. Although Heiss briefly skated in ice shows after the Squaw Valley Winter Olympics, she retired from the sport in 1962. However, in the late 1970s, she returned to coach several skaters in her hometown, Akron, Ohio, area, and has been a prominent figure skating coach since.