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They were, however, the favorite kids in the local speed-skating club. By the time Eric was 17 and Beth 16, they had made the Olympic squad for the 1976 Innsbruck Games. They placed well below their more seasoned competitors, but by 1977, they were world beaters. When Beth won the World Championship in 1979, she became only the second skater to win all four women's races (the 500, 1,000, 1,500 and 3,000 meters). At that point Eric, though already a three-time World Champion, had never managed to win all his events. Recalls Beth: "I said to myself, 'Hey, even my brother hasn't done this.' " Her distinction lasted a week. Eric went out and won all four of the men's races at the World Championships in Oslo. Says Beth: "You've got to respect a brother like that. He's inspiring."
TAI BABILONIA AND RANDY GARDNER.
They finish each other's sentences. Randy takes the noun, Tai handles the verb, and, as often as not, the object comes simultaneously. They laugh at the same things, share many of the same friends, even agree on passing up lucrative professional careers to attend college. Most important, they skate as one, their blades stroking in purest harmony, legs extended perfectly parallel. Nor is the mirror image effect confined to their obvious moves. They continue it through the most delicate gestures; heads tilted at precisely the same angle, fingers matched and mated as if held by a glove. "It comes from time, from growing up together," says Randy Gardner. "A pair doesn't achieve that harmony until after four or five years of skating together. We keep working with each other and it just keeps growing."
After ten years together, Tai, 19, and Randy, 21, have grown into the most technically sound, artistically refined figure skating pair in U.S. history. Also the most successful. In 1979 they became the first U.S. pair to win the World Figure Skating Championship since 1950, when the champions were Karol and Peter Kennedy. When they take the ice on Feb. 15 and 17 at the Olympic Ice Arena before a crowd of some 8,500, they will be co-favorites (along with Soviet Warhorse Pair Irina Rodnina and Alexander Zaitsev) to win a gold medal. It would be the first U.S. gold in the pairs in the 56-year history of the Winter Games.
For all the balletic grace of their performances, Babilonia and Gardner are athletes first, masters of physical disciplines as demanding as almost any in sport. Tai's ability to leap high enough and remain airborne long enough to complete whirling triple turns would be the envy of any N.B.A. star. Randy is only 5 ft. 9 in. and 142 Ibs., but there is tremendous strength and stamina coiled within that seemingly slight frame. He lifts Tai (5 ft. 5 in., 113 lbs.) as easily as others pick up their skates. In stamina tests conducted last summer at Squaw Valley, Calif., Randy came out the winner against a marathon runner.