Like Dan Jansen, Bonnie Blair made her Olympic debut at the 1984 Games in Sarajevo. Like Jansen, Blair had a respectable finish for a 19 year old when she finished eighth in the 500m sprint. (This was only the second Olympic Games in which the United States failed to place a single skater on the podium.) Unlike Jansen’s, Blair’s skate in Sarajevo marked the beginning of a spectacular Olympic career.
The making of a speed skater
Although she was born in New York state, Blair grew up in Champaign, Illinois and began skating there at the ripe old age of two.
By age four, Blair was competing in short track speed skating events (Short track is the type of speed skating with multiple racers on the track that bubbled firmly into the American consciousness with Apolo Ohno’s gold medal win in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.) winning her age group at the Illinois Speed Skating Championship when she was seven.
Short track speed skating wouldn’t become an Olympic event until 1992 so in 1979 Blair changed coaches and made the switch to long track skating quickly mastering the demands of the sport and qualifying for the U.S. National team on her first attempt at age 15. Then, when the youngster who Bernie Lincicome of the Chicago Tribune would later describe as as “the kid sister of all America, as genuine as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich”, decided she needed to go to Europe to train for that first Olympic team, the Champaign Policemen’s Benevolent Association raised $7,000 the entire amount Blair needed to make the trip while she completed her high school courses through correspondence courses. Dan Jansen, whose Olympic tragedies and triumph I detailed in the previous post and who became a close friend, was among her training partners overseas.
Blair made that 1984 U.S. Olympic team but was not quite ready to face down the powerful skaters from the German Democratic Republic (aka East Germany) and, as noted above, skated to that respectable eighth place finish in the 500m. In what would become something of an expanding tradition, Blair’s family traveled to Sarajevo where they stayed with a local family and watched her compete. Some years later Blair described her experience to the Sarajevo Times,
It was kind of being like that kid in a candy store. You don’t believe you are here, this is unbelievable, just total excitement and thrill with every aspect that went with the Games from the Opening Ceremony, walking in, to the crowd. I was able to pick out my mom and my two sisters who were in the crowd. And that just brought tears to my eyes. It’s just so overwhelming to think ‘OK, the whole world is watching this!
Not quite a stampede to Calgary
Blair’s path to becoming one of the greatest speed skaters of her generation, if not of all time, continued over the ensuing four years as she continued to hone a blazing start with the impeccable technique that she would need to overcome the disadvantage of her relatively petite stature particularly when compared to the powerful East Germans. In 1987, Blair won four of 18 available medals in the series of World Cup races and set her first world record registering a time of 39.43 seconds in a 500 meter race. East German women won 13 of the remaining 14.
One focus on the U.S. team in the buildup the Calgary Games was a chance at redemption for the team that had failed to produce a single medalist in Sarajevo four years prior. Then, on 6 December 1987, Christa Rothenburger of the GDR sent a message to Blair when she set a new world record of 39.39 seconds in the 500 meters.
The small group of family that had accompanied Blair to Sarajevo ballooned to 30 in Calgary. Many of them followed Blair from race to race and had earned the sobriquet the “Blair Bunch.”
The skaters would take to the ice on February 22, 1988 with Rothenburger skating two pairs ahead of Blair. Here’s what happened:
Notice that, in a sport where world records, like race wins, usually move in increments of hundredths of a second, Rothenburger doesn’t simply break her own world record, she shatters it by skating a time of 39.12 seconds. Also notice that, thanks to her fast start, after the first 100 meters, Blair is ahead of Rothenburger’s time by .02 second. She finished with a new world record of 39.10 precisely .02 second ahead of Rothenburger. Six days later in the 1,000m Blair skated first and set a new personal best and Olympic record. However, Rothenburger came along and set another world record while Rothenburger’s teammate also bettered Blair’s time and the previous world record. For this trip the Blair Bunch had to be content with a bronze to accompany Bonnie’s first gold medal.
Vive la France
The period between the 1988 Calgary Games and the 1992 Games in Albertville presented some challenges for America’s sweetheart speed skater. In 1990 Charlie Blair, Bonnie’s father and a key member of the Blair Bunch died of lung cancer. Then, in the 1990-91 season Blair fell ill with bronchitis that she had trouble shaking and that prompted her drop to a disappointing fifth place finish in that year’s World Sprint Championships.
Ten months before the 1992 Olympics, the U.S. brought in Peter Mueller to replace Mike Crowe as the team’s coach. Working with Mueller, who sometimes worked the team so hard they reportedly had to shower sitting down, Blair began regaining her championship form.
Despite the death of her father, the Blair Bunch had expanded to 46 members for the 1992 Games in Albertville. Other fans could easily identify them by their singular “Team Blair” purple jackets and their repetitive choruses of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.” Bolstered by their support, Blair took to the outdoor ice on 10 February
Although her time of 40.33 seconds was far off her world record, it was fast enough for her to become the first woman to win the gold medal in the 500m race in consecutive Olympics. But Blair wasn’t done. Four days later, Blair returned to the ice for the 1000m sprint. Unlike her race in Calgary Blair again did enough to win the race matching the 1964 feat of Lidiya Skoblikova becoming only the second woman to win both sprints in the same Olympic Games.
Not a little hammer
With only two years between the Games in Albertville and Lillehammer, Blair had a chance not only to defend a pair of Olympic gold medals but to surpass the gold medal total for any American woman to that point in either the summer or winter games. (Evelyn Ashford, Janet Evans, and Pat McCormick had four each.)
Some weeks before the Games, a Norwegian reporter asked Blair how many of the Blair Bunch would be coming to Lillehammer. Blair said she was uncertain because of the considerable expense. In another demonstration of how the Norwegians made the Lillehammer Games special, the day after his article appeared he received offers from enough local residents to provide lodging for 60 of Blair’s relatives and friends. And they all showed up. (Keep in mind that this was essentially based on a printed story. The internet was barely a decade old and nothing was yet going viral.)
On 19 February, Blair completed her 100m straightaway plus one circuit of the track in 39.25 seconds, .36 seconds ahead of Canadian Susan Auch, to stand alone as the only American Olympian – man or woman – to win a gold medal in the same event in three successive Winter Games. Winning gold in the 1000m scheduled four days later, and she would stand alone as the only American woman with five gold medals.
Not only did Blair win the 1000 meter race but she did so by finishing 1.38 seconds ahead of Anke Baier of Germany still the largest margin in Olympic history for the event. Blair is also the only woman to win consecutive gold medals at this distance. And thanks to Norwegian generosity, the Blair Bunch was there to see it happen.