Background
Her mother was Virginia Fratianne.
Her mother was Virginia Fratianne.
Throughout her figure skating career, Fratianne was coached by Frank Carroll. Fratianne became the first female skater to land two different types of triple jumps (toe loop and salchow) in her free skating programs in 1976 at the United States. National Championships. Although Fratianne fell on her triple salchow jump in her free skating routine, the judges considered she was better overall than Pötzsch.
In 1979, Fratianne was able to regain her world title, which she had lost to Pötzsch in 1978 in Ottawa, Canada.
Like Watanabe, her compulsory figures were significantly weaker than her free skating. Consequently, she frequently placed well below Pötzsch and Lurz in the compulsories, forcing her to attempt to overcome her deficiencies through strong short and free programs.
In the short and free programs, Fratianne never placed lower than Pötzsch or Lurz between 1977 and 1980 in any competition. At the 1980 Winter Olympics, Fratianne placed third in the compulsory figures, first in the short program, and second in the free skate to place second overall, while Pötzsch took the gold with 1st in figures, 4th in the short program, and 3rd in the free skate.
There have been persistent allegations that Fratianne was "robbed" of the gold medal by a conspiracy among Eastern-bloc judges, but in fact only two of the nine judges on the panel were from Eastern-bloc countries and only the judges from Japan and the United States of America placed Fratianne first.
All others placed Pötzsch first, mainly due to her substantial lead in the compulsory figures. The officials were:
Wolfgang Kunz (FRG=West Germany)
Ludwig Gassner (Austria)
Kinuko Ueno (Japan)
Charles U. Foster (United States of America)
Radovan Lipovscak (Yugoslavia)
Leena Vainio (Finland)
Giorgio Siniscialcio (Italy)
Ingird Linke (German Democratic Republic=East Germany)
Markus Germann (Switzerland)
substitute judge was Sergei Kononykhin (Soviet Union)
referee: Benjamin T. Wright (United States of America)
assistant referee: Donald H. Gilchrist
In 1981, the scoring system in figure skating was modified to combine the results of the compulsory figures, short program, and free skating by adding placements instead of carrying over raw scores. This made it less likely that skaters could build up a huge lead in the compulsory figures.
This decision was made long before the 1980 Winter Olympics.
After the 1980 season, Fratianne retired from competitive skating and performed in touring shows, including ten years as a lead skater of Disney on Ice. In 1993, she was inducted into the United States Figure Skating Hall of Fame.