Background

Bonnie Blair was born on March 18, 1964, in Cornwall, New York, United States; the youngest of six children. She is the daughter of Charlie and Eleanor Blair, who raised their large family in Champaign, Illinois. Professionally, Charlie Blair was an engineer while Eleanor Blair worked in real estate.

Education

Blair first donned skates at the age of two and was competing as a speed skater by the age of four. She won a number of races as a child, including the Illinois state championship when she was seven. While Blair focused on speed skating, she also competed in other sports and activities.

Bonnie studied at Jefferson Middle School. When she was attending Centennial High School, she competed in track and field events, including 100 meter to 800 meter races, long jump, and triple jump. She also was a cheerleader and on the student council.

By the time Blair was fifteen, she decided to make speed skating her sole sport, training in a vigilant and dedicated fashion. At fifteen, Blair was named to the United States speed skating team. She began training with Cathy Priestner, who had won a silver medal in speed skating for Canada in the 1976 games, at the University of Illinois rink.

Priestner profoundly affected Blair's direction as a speed skater. She had Blair train in the Olympic style on both short and long-track races. The Olympic style favored Blair's small stature and emphasis on technique. From early in her career, Blair's father was convinced that she would win Olympic Gold.

When Blair was sixteen, she competed at her first Olympic trials for the 1980 Winter Olympics. Though she did well at the meet, she did not make the team. Blair wanted to continue to train for the 1984 Olympics and beyond, but had problems getting funding for her training. She received help from the local Champaign community. Fundraising was spearheaded by the Champaign police force in 1982, and Blair received support from such disparate sources as one of her brother's college fraternity brothers, professional basketball player Jack Silma who played with the Milwaukee Bucks. This allowed Blair to train seriously, including one stint with the United States men's speed skating team in Butte, Montana. Blair remained a popular figure in Champaign for many years and was even given the key to the city. She graduated from Centennial High School and later took some courses at Parkland College in Champaign.

After the 1988 Olympics, Blair continued her education, studying physical education at Montana Technological University.

Career

Blair made her international competitive debut at the 1984 World Sprinting Championships where she placed tenth. She had more success, making the United States women's speed skating team for the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. She did not medal, but finished eighth in the 500-meter race. When Blair returned to the United States, she increased the intensity of her training, including weight training, running, biking, and rollerblading in addition to skating. Her hard work paid off when in 1985, she won the United States sprint championship. She would win this championship every year through 1994. In 1986, Blair set her first world record in the 500 meters. Blair would also hold a number of world and American records over the course of her speed skating career.

Blair began to succeed on the international speed skating stage. In 1987, she won the World Cup in both the 500 and 1000 meter races. By the time of the 1988 Winter Olympic Games in Calgary, Alberta, Blair was regarded as one of the hopes for the future of American speed skating. She lived up to the hype by winning a gold medal in the 500 meters and a bronze in the 1000 meters. During her gold medal-winning race, she also set a world record with a time of 39.1 seconds. She finished fourth in the 1500 meter race. Blair was the only American to win two medals at these games, and was given the honor of carrying the American flag at the closing ceremonies.

After the games ended, she received a number of commercial endorsements that funded her training, including Disney World and other commercials, though these opportunities were not as numerous or long-lived as originally hoped.

In 1989, Blair won the World Sprint Championships, though she did not train as hard as she had for the Olympics. She lost focus for a while after the death of her father. She stopped training as a skater for a brief period, spending four months training as a cyclist. Blair finished fourth in a national sprint competition for cyclists.

Another problem for Blair was the lack of competition among the American women speed skaters in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The trials were a breeze for her. The only real competition came internationally, but because of her lack of training in 1989-91, she did not have much success in races in 1990-91. For example, Blair finished fifth in the 1991 World Sprint Championships, though she was also suffering from bronchitis at the time.

As the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France, approached, Blair regained her focus on speed skating. She was considered the best American hope for a medal, and did not disappoint. She won the first American gold of the games when she won the 500-meter race. Though the race was not great, in part because the ice surface was too warm, the victory made Blair the first woman to win gold in consecutive Winter Olympic games. Blair also won gold in the 1000-meter race. In both races, she was pushed by Ye Qiaobo of China who earned two silver medals. Blair won the 1000-meter race by only .02 seconds. Ye trained by watching tapes of Blair. Blair's only disappointment was finishing 21st in the 1500-meter race.

After the Albertville games ended, Blair again took the opportunity created by her celebrity. She signed with Advantage International, a sports marketing group, and did a number of commercials endorsements, including Jeep, Evian, National Frozen Foods, and Rollerblades. She also began serving on the board for United States Speed skating. Training remained her focus, however. Because an indoor training oval, Pettit National Ice Center, opened in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Blair moved there from Champaign.

Blair continued to have success on the international level, though she also challenged herself to find ways to win. In 1994, she won a gold medal at the World Championships in 500 meters. Still, Blair changed her training a bit. She hired a different coach, Nick Thometz, who emphasized something different for Blair: explosive drills over strength and distance training. Blair also continued to improve her already great technique.

When the 1994 Winter Olympics at Lillehammer, Norway, came around, Blair was again favored to win. She continued to compete in part because there were only two years between these Olympic Games. (The International Olympic Committee wanted the Summer and Winter Olympic Games to alternate every two years.) Though Blair trained for the Olympics like they were any other meet, she dominated the trials in the 500, 1000, and 1500 meter races.

At the Olympic Games, Blair had the support of her family, the so-called "Blair Bunch" which consisted of immediate and extended family members who attended a number of her more important races en masse. They saw Blair win two more golds. She won the 500 meters with a time of 39.1 seconds and the 1000 meters with a time of 1:18.74. The victories led to more endorsements, and even more important to Blair, the popularity of speed skating.

Blair's last year as a competitive speed skater was 1995. Though she knew she was retiring, she left on top. In early 1995, she set another world record in the 500 meters skating on the Olympic oval in Calgary where she won her first medal. Blair broke the 39-second mark by skating it in 38.13 seconds. She also set a record in the 1000 meters with a time of 1:19.3. Blair won the World Sprint Championships, then retired on March 18, 1995, after the competition held on her home ice in Milwaukee. Blair said she quit because there was nothing left for her to prove.

As of 2002, Blair served on the United States Speedskating's board of directors. As of 2014, she worked as a motivational speaker and corporate spokesperson. In the same year, Bonnie was a member of the United States Olympic delegation to Sochi. In 2018, she served on the board of the Pettit National Ice Center.

Achievements

• Bonnie Blair is the most decorated American Winter Olympian of all time. She won six medals competing in three Winter Olympics Games, the second most medals won by a woman in the Winter Olympic Games (the first was Lydia Skoblikova). Of the six, five were gold, making Blair the only American woman to ever win five gold medals in the games. Blair was also the first American speed skater to win in more than one Olympic Games (1988, 1992, and 1994).
  
  Bonnie has been inducted into the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame, the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame, and the United States Olympic Hall of Fame. She is a recipient of the Sullivan Award and Oscar Mathisen Award. Blair also was a Female Athlete of the Year as selected by the Associated Press in 1994.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Winning Edge

    (Olympic speedskating champion Bonnie Blair's recommendati...)

    1996

Religion

Bonnie Blair was raised in a Catholic family.

Views

Blair is a motivational speaker and humanitarian. She supports a number of charities through her own organization, the Bonnie Blair Charitable Fund.

Quotations: "Winning doesn't always mean being first. Winning means you're doing better than you've ever done before."

"There's probably nothing quite like crossing the finish line and seeing the clock read numbers that you have never seen before."

"It's sad to know I'm done. But looking back, I've got a lot of great memories."

"I never could have achieved the success that I have without setting physical activity and health goals."

"What's really hard is when you're having those more difficult days, you've got to be able to dig down deep and be able to go out there and do what it takes to be the best you can be, even on the hardest days."

"Anytime you ride against the best in the world, it becomes a learning process."

"My parents put skates on me at age 2, the way it should be if you're serious, and I've always liked it."

"My legs tightened up pretty much, and it was a hard last corner for me."

"Even though I enjoy that head-to-head competition part, one of the things that drove me to long track was if I won or if I lost I want to know it's all on my shoulders and it didn't have anything to do with anybody else."

"When you're in a sport like speed skating where the clock gives you the results, there is always a faster goal or a personal best to beat."

"No matter what the competition is, I try to find a goal that day and better that goal."

"I wasn't really expecting me to win the gold in this race. To get another medal for myself and for the U.S. was a pretty good thing to happen, I'd say."

"I'm definitely going to miss hearing the sound of that gun."

"What I've learned from my own journey, and from my family's experience with cancer, is how important it is to stay positive and move forward. Not every day is going to be perfect; that's life. But staying positive is going to get you to the next day."

"I was really happy with my race, though. I beat my personal best by 1.2 seconds."

"I love short track. I competed in short track, I was a world champion in 1986 but at that point in time it wasn't in the Olympic Games so I moved into long track. Short track is a blast to skate and it's a blast to watch."

"The sport I love has taken me around the world and shown me many things."

"Apolo is going to have to keep skating so he can add more gold to his entourage."

Personality

Although she was small for a speed skater, Blair's technique was nearly flawless. She was an exceptionally consistent skater, able to maintain an accentuated crouch and a smooth rhythm in her strides throughout a race, while other skaters typically lost time to momentary lapses in their technique.

Physical Characteristics: Bonnie Blair is 5 ft 5 in (165 cm) tall and weighs 130 lb (59 kg).

Interests

• Sport & Clubs

  skating

Connections

Blair began dating speed skater Dave Cruikshank in 1990. They married six years later. The couple has two children - a son, Grant, and a daughter, Blair.

Father:

Charlie Blair

(died December 25, 1989)

Mother:

Eleanor Blair

Spouse:

Dave Cruikshank

(born January 11, 1969)

Dave Cruikshank is a four-time United States Olympic speedskater, an NHL skating and performance coach, owner of DC Hybrid Skating, a performance training center for hockey players in Milwaukee.

Son:

Grant Cruikshank Blair

(born July 19, 1998)

Daughter:

Blair Cruikshank

Friend:

Dan Jansen

(born June 17, 1965)

Dan Jansen is a retired American speed skater. A multiple world champion in sprint and perennial favorite at the Winter Olympics, he broke a ten-year Olympic jinx when he won a gold medal in his final race, which was the 1,000 meters in the 1994 Winter Games.

Friend:

Dave Silk

(born January 1, 1958)

Dave Silk is an American former professional ice hockey player. His professional career, which spanned 13 years, included 249 NHL regular-season games with the Boston Bruins, Winnipeg Jets, Detroit Red Wings and New York Rangers.

References

• Bonnie Blair: Power on Ice An easy-to-read text and many special family photographs mark a chronicle of the life and speed-skating career of Bonnie Blair, the only American woman to win five Olympic gold medals, showing how a small but determined athlete can triumph.
  1996
• Bonnie Blair: Golden Streak The book traces the life of Bonnie Blair, the speed skater who has won five gold medals while participating in three Olympic games.
  1994
• Bonnie Blair, Top Speed Skater Young girls must be encouraged to believe in themselves and to know that they can achieve any goal that they set for themselves in any arena, including sports. The six athletes profiled in these accessible biographies serve as role models to prove that "going for it" pays off.
  1997