(5 of 10)
Randy began skating at age six, Tai at age eight. Her first exposure to the sport came when a friend's birthday party included a trip to a rink in Burbank, Calif. "After that, I begged my mother for lessons," she says. They did not come cheap: her father, a Los Angeles police detective, has held as many as five part-time jobs at once to offset the financial burden. To cut back on expenses, Tai used a pair of hand-me-down skates from one of Dean Martin's daughters. At nine she was picked to skate with Randy in a local ice show because she was the only girl smaller than he. The serendipitous meeting was just the beginning.
For years, the two rose at 4:30 a.m. to take advantage of the only time when the rink would be free of cavorting kids and sedate leisure skaters. During those predawn hours, Coach John Nicks, a onetime world champion at pairs figure skating, would drill the two relentlessly. Tai, whose serene beauty masks a fierce competitiveness but reflects an exquisite racial mix (American Indian, black, Filipino, Chinese and German), paid for failed jumps with a missing tooth, a broken tailbone and a fractured arm.
World-class figure skating is not only a fiercely competitive but also an intensely political realm, in which judging often breaks down along East-West, oldtimer-newcomer lines. If Tai and Randy have suffered from misjudgments in the past, they may benefit from them at Lake Placid. When the couple won the 1979 world title, defending champions Rodnina, 30, and Zaitsev, 27, winners of six world titles and one Olympic gold medal, were in temporary retirement awaiting the birth of their baby. Tai and Randy's victory was thus tainted by the absence of truly commanding competition. But by now their fluid style has won converts among international judges.
The skate-off between the two powerful if uninspired Soviets and the expressive but less physical young Americans could be the most dramatic confrontation of the entire Games. As reigning champions, Randy and Tai must be beaten, not merely battled to a draw. Says Randy: "We're setting the pace now. We have to skate well, but to beat us, they'll have to risk our style."
LINDA FRATIANNE. At 14, she whisked onto the ice for the 1975 National Championships and reeled off the first series of successful triple jumps ever done in competition by a woman skater. Dorothy Hamill, the reigning queen who would soon win the Olympic gold medal, leaned down from her perch on the victory stand and, as the applause washed over them, told Fratianne, "Listen, kid. Next year this is going to be all yours."