With this year's worlds cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rob Pizzo looks at the time the event didn't happen.

[AngieNikodinovLove (ANL)]

With this year's worlds cancelled Rob Pizzo looks at the last time the event didn't happen.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1713185859522

Looking back at the 1961 world figure skating championships. I do watch videos of that year from time to time. Wow I can’t believe how we used to dress in the late 1800s

 

[Sasha'sSpins]

I watch 1961 Nationals too sometimes. It's haunting - knowing the fate of most of those top skaters, their coaches, and their loved ones who shared that fatal final flight.

The skaters are all so heartbreakingly young. I'm old enough now to be a mother to the eldest of them.

 

[aftershocks]

With this year's worlds cancelled Rob Pizzo looks at the last time the event didn't happen.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1713185859522

Looking back at the 1961 world figure skating championships. I do watch videos of that year from time to time. Wow I can’t believe how we used to dress in the late 1800s

Thanks for sharing. The Sabena crash in 1961 had a huge reverberating impact on the sport that we still see to this day. It led to the beginning of the fluid global interconnections among members of the figure skating community with a number of international coaches coming to the U.S. to help rebuild the sport in this country. There had certainly been immigration to this country and to Canada previously by a number of European skaters at different periods, e.g., after the two World Wars, but the 1961 tragedy was a huge turning point for the sport as a whole on a number of levels.

Sadly, with this latest crisis, life as we know it both on a personal individual level, and for the sport (and many other sports, industries and institutions) has already changed. We are in the midst of it now, so there's no way to understand the full impact, or to get a detailed handle on exactly how everything will be different as we push forward.

 

[Lacey]

The North American Championships between the US and Canada were held in Philadelphia that year 1961. I was 14. They practiced at my rink, Phila SC & Humane Society, or Ardmore, I was there. My dad filmed all of them, I just realized I probably have those movies in my basement.

One of the girls at my school and her sister had their father visiting school because he was there as a Judge (they were boarders). I think at the time that I was more swept up in the loss of her father than the US's team's whole loss.

But I distinctly remember watching Wide World of Sports and seeing Peggy Fleming coming up soon after. I hadn't realized Peggy's coach had been on the plane.

And, yes, I dressed in those '60s costumes, but for me it was times three because I had two older sisters and my mother made us dress like triplets. There was no stretch in any of my outfits, couldn't wear them now in my fatness.