Ice Still Nice For Hamill Figure Skater Shows No Signs Of Slowing Down At Age 43

How old is too old for a figure skater to be doing jumps and spins and new routines on a 34-city tour?

Not 43, says 43-year-old Dorothy Hamill.

The figure-skating legend is one of the featured skaters on the Champions On Ice Summer Tour that stops in Spokane for a performance Tuesday night at the Arena.

“I’ve been on this tour for the last four years and it’s great to travel with these wonderfully talented youngsters. I do feel like a granny out here, though,” Hamill said during a phone interview last week from Minneapolis.

A few of the skaters on the tour are still teenagers, but all have had plenty of experience in both competitions and exhibition. And, as the name of the tour indicates, all have won or placed high in major competitions.

The lineup of skaters who will perform in Spokane is long and distinguished: Michelle Kwan, Oksana Baiul, Surya Bonaly, Nicole Bobek, Victor Petrenko, Todd Eldredge, Elvis Stojko, Michael Weiss and Philippe Candeloro. Of those, Baiul, Hamill and Petrenko all have Olympic gold medals; Kwan and Stojko have Olympic silver medals (Stojko has two).

The list of pairs skaters performing Tuesday is equally impressive, including 1998 Olympic pairs champions Oksana Kazakova and Artur Dmitriev, and this year’s world champion ice dancers, Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat. In all, 29 skaters will appear here.

The Pacific Northwest stops - Seattle and Portland following Spokane’s show - are at the end of the eight-week tour, which kicked off in early April in Baltimore.

“The hardest part of touring is not having time to skate,” Hamill says. “At home I skate two hours a day and go to the gym. By the end of the tour I feel out of shape. We are traveling to a different city every day and the hard part is trying to maintain the level without training every day. Like today, I had just 25 minutes to warm up.

“In your 20s, it’s OK to miss training, but at my age I can’t even miss a day,” she says.

Another equally difficult aspect of touring, Hamill says, is being away from her 11-year-old daughter, Alexandra. She’s not the only parent on the tour, though. Others include Petrenko, Weiss and Candeloro, the newest dad in the lineup. He and his wife, Olivia, who live near Paris, had a baby girl in late April.

Twenty-four years have passed since Hamill stood on the platform in Innsbruck, Austria, with an Olympic gold medal hanging from her neck while “The Star-Spangled Banner” was played. Since then, Hamill has skated in dozens of exhibitions, TV specials, professional competitions and on tours.

In March, she beat Katarina Witt, 10 years her junior, in a friendly competition at the Goodwill Games in Lake Placid, N.Y.

Between all of the skating, she married and divorced twice, worked as a TV commentator and bought the foundering Ice Capades but was unable to keep the company from going bankrupt. Yet never has her reputation as a top-rated skater faltered.

“She’s a legend that deserves to be,” Olympic gold medalist Brian Boitano, a fellow veteran at age 36, told the Baltimore Sun. “Nobody spins as well as her to this day. I still see her do a scratch spin every night and go, `Whoa, how does she do that?’ She’s a queen.”

With two years remaining on her contract with Champions On Ice, Hamill expects to still be skating in top form at 45.

“I never thought I’d be skating at my age,” she says. “I am going to be 44 in a month or so and I’ll take it one year at a time.”

Even when her performing days are behind her, though, she says she’s not hanging up the skates: “I will always skate because it’s something I love.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: PREVIEW Champions on Ice

The John Hancock Champions On Ice Summer Tour appears Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Spokane Arena. Tickets are $55, $50, $40 and $35, available through G&B Select-a-Seat (325-SEAT or 1-800-325-SEAT).