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The Fall. Then Penny ran up against a lithe (5 ft. 5 in., 115 Ibs.), tousleheaded Canadian named Anne Heggtveit. Poised and perky at 21, Anne lost 12 Ibs. while training for the Olympics, decided to concentrate on the slalom, where agility counts more than weight. She contented herself with a respectable twelfth in both the downhill and giant slalom. But right from the start of the slalom, Anne put the pressure on Penny, darted through the first steep, 53-gate course in a blazing time of 54 sec. that put her first and left her U.S. rival dangling in seventh place. Nor did Anne let up on the second course, finishing in 55.6 sec. Hell-bent to save her glory, Penny fell and bumped far down the slope on the seat of her pants. Penny ended up a dejected 33rd, and cool Anne Heggtveit was F.I.S. champion. "If I could have stood up, I would have been world champion," shrugged Penny. "But I couldn't stand up." Only consolation: the U.S.'s Betsy Snite finished 3.3 sec. behind Anne to take second in the slalom.
¶ Let down by its girl skiers, the U.S. rested its hopes for individual gold medals on a pair of figure skaters. The confidence was well placed. In the climactic free skating, New York City's blonde Carol Heiss, 20, four-time world champion since she took a silver medal in 1956, flashed a smile that was only a trifle too tight, soared effortlessly through an intricate routine (the show stopper: two successive, whirling leaps taken from alternate skates), and easily won her gold medal to keep a promise made to her dying mother in 1956. Daughter of a baker and a junior at New York University, Carol insists that she will not cash in on her hard-earned skill as the world's finest skater. Said she: "I want to think about the next dance as the most important thing in my future."
¶ After finishing second in the compulsory figures, Colorado's Dave Jenkins, 23, a second-year student at Ohio's Western Reserve University Medical School, put on such an acrobatic display that one judge gave him a rare perfect score for execution, won a gold medal to match the one Big Brother Hayes Alan brought home from the 1956 Olympics.
As expected, the big overall winner was the Soviet Union with seven gold medals and 165½ unofficial points (second: Sweden with three gold medals, 71½ points), thanks largely to strength in such events as speed skating and cross-country skiing. The U.S., with three gold medals and 71 points, finished third.