Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Rink-a-ding-ding

If anyone knows what U.S. Olympic figure skaters Michelle Kwan and Tara Lipinski are going through physically, mentally and emotionally this week at the Games in Nagano, Japan, it's Barbara Roles-Williams.

In 1960, at age 18, Roles-Williams, now the figure skating director at the recently opened Sahara Ice Palace on East Karen Avenue, stood on the Olympic podium in Squaw Valley, Calif., having won the bronze medal in the Ladies Singles figure skating competition. (Teammate Carol Heiss took the gold medal and the Netherlands' Sjoukje Dijkstra won the silver.)

"It was pretty exciting," recalls Roles-Williams, who is among a surprisingly large community of former amateur and professional figure skaters who now call Las Vegas home.

But back in those days, figure skaters weren't called upon for multi-million- dollar product endorsement deals, or to join star-studded skating world tours.

"At that time, if you were between 18 and 20, it was sort of like you were getting too old for skating. And, of course it wasn't a financial career. It was just a sport," she explains of her decision to hang up her skates shortly after the Games.

The following year, the unthinkable happened: The entire U.S. World Figure Skating Team was killed in a plane crash in Belgium while en route to the World Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

In 1962, the U.S. Figure Skating Association turned to Roles-Williams to represent the nation at the National Ladies Championships in Boston, where she placed first, and also the World Championships in Prague, where she placed third.

Then she gave up skating -- at least temporarily. After marrying and having children, Roles-Williams performed with "Ice Capades" for a year, as well as in television commercials.

Her figure skating coaching career began in 1969. Some of her star pupils have included Lisa-Marie Allen, who placed fifth in the 1980 Olympics, and several Swedish, German and Finnish skating champs. She moved to Las Vegas in 1990 and began coaching here, at the Santa Fe Ice Arena, the following year.

Other skaters of note have trained here in recent years.

Who's Who of skating

Viktor Petrenko, the 1992 Olympic gold medalist, trained at the Santa Fe Ice Arena, as did, for a brief time last year, current U.S. Olympic skater Nicole Bobek. And U.S. pairs team and husband and wife Todd Sands and Jenni Meno (who placed fifth at the '92 World Championships, as well as at the '94 Games) also resided here.

Not bad for a town that, until earlier this week (with the opening of the Sahara Ice Palace) had only one full-time ice surface -- the Santa Fe Ice Arena -- which is booked around-the-clock with hockey, figure and public skating sessions.

Add 1988 Olympic silver medalist Elizabeth Manley to the local Who's Who list.

The Canadian recently purchased a home in Green Valley. When she's not on the road (most recently with Tom Collins' "Champions on Ice 1998 Winter Tour"), she trains daily at the Santa Fe Ice Arena.

The move from Palm Desert, Calif. to the Las Vegas valley was largely prompted by the fact that Manley's choreographer, David Gravatt, lives here. "Whenever I had an opening in my schedule, I was going to Vegas to work with David on new material," she says on the phone from Toronto. "It just got to the point where I said, 'This is really stupid. I have a place in California that I never see.' "

Manley usually shares the ice in the mornings with some of the more than 100 members of the Las Vegas Figure Skating Club. (The group hopes to host the U.S. National Figure Skating Championships here prior to the Olympic Games in 2002.)

"I can go in (to the rink) anytime and say, 'Can I get an hour somewhere,' and (managers there) do everything they can to get me ice time," Manley says, even between sweeps of the Zamboni ice-cleaning machine.

Although she no longer skates competitively, Manley says the need to maintain her skating skills is great. Performing in touring shows pays her bills these days -- quite well, in fact.

"Now, there's so much money involved. All of the Elizabeth Manleys and Dorothy Hamills and people like us, we're all training again and working hard," she says. "For me to go out there and spend some time training is worth it because the better I keep skating, the more requests (to perform) I'll get."

Las Vegas on ice

Maybe some of those will come from the office of Don Watson, vice president of Tom Collins Enterprises, Inc., on Buffalo Drive.

A former figure skater who toured with the legendary Sonja Henie during his teens, Watson's current duties include scheduling cities to host the massive "Champions on Ice" tour and negotiating contracts for its star lineup, which in recent years has included Petrenko, Olympic silver medalist Nancy Kerrigan and gold medalist Brian Boitano. The tour will play Las Vegas on July 3.

Along with the availability of ice time, Las Vegas' large "international population" has contributed to its ability to draw top-name skaters here, Watson says. "I think the only thing Las Vegas really needs is more ice surfaces."

(Good news: Several rinks have been proposed and/or are under construction around the valley, including a pair of rinks at Sunset Road and Las Vegas Boulevard South, two more at the Blue Diamond interchange and Interstate 15, and an outdoor rink on Mount Charleston.)

Las Vegas also has a long history of production shows that featured ice skating, most notably the since-closed "City Lites" and "Razzle Dazzle" (Flamingo Hilton), "Follies on Ice" (Caesars Palace), "Spice on Ice" (Hacienda) and "Nudes on Ice" (Union Plaza).

The production shows of the late '50s and early '60s were very good to The Burling Triplets.

The Canadian-born sisters, Gloria, Glena and Gladys -- who learned to skate as children by playing hockey with their brothers -- made their professional skating debut in 1945 with "Ice Capades."

One of the most memorable performances in their 13-year-long stint with the show was for the king and queen of England in 1949. "We were nervous because it was a big night for us anyway," recalls Glena, now 69. "It was just great."

"It was scary at times," Gladys says. "To (perform for) a big audience is kind of scary at first. But we were all young at that time and it was so wonderful."

When the sisters arrived in Las Vegas (with husbands in tow) in the late '50s, they skated separately in production shows at the El Cortez, The New Frontier and the Thunderbird.

These days, the since-widowed triplets, who still don bright red locks, live together in a Las Vegas mobile home and skate occasionally for recreation.

Do they miss their days in the spotlight? "You'd better believe it," says Gloria, who works part time at a local beauty supply shop.

"I'd do it all over again if I could. It was a wonderful experience," adds Gladys, a retired department store clerk, explaining how ice shows have changed a lot since their day. "It's not really skating to me. I think it's more dancing on ice than it is skating."

Glena, who works in the gift shop at Summerlin Hospital, concurs. "We skated hard. ... (The skaters) were more of a family back then than they are now."

Melissa Militano-Warkmeister, the 1971 U.S. Junior Ladies National figure skating champion, is also an "Ice Capades" alumni, having skated with the company during the mid- to late-'70s.

Also a former U.S. pairs skater, she and her longtime skating partner and brother, Mark, were the U.S. Senior Pairs National champions in 1973. They also competed in five World and five National Championships, and placed seventh at the '72 Olympic Games.

Mark, now a skating coach in Minnesota, became frustrated by the "politics" of skating, Militano-Warkmeister says, and retired from amateur skating the following year.

"We were, at the time, going through problems with our style," Militano-Warkmeister says, explaining how she and her brother were among the first to experiment with ice skating "costumes" that are so prevalent today. "I think it was kind of hard for the judges to get used to that and, in a way, we really got marked down for being different."

In 1974-75, she and partner Johnny Johns reigned as U.S. Senior Pairs National champs. They also competed in two world championships together. Following her stint with "Ice Capades," Militano-Warkmeister retired from professional skating in '79, the same year she and husband Rand (who had a trampoline/comedy act in "Ice Capades") moved to Las Vegas.

Though she continues to teach private skating lessons at the Santa Fe Ice Arena, Militano-Warkmeister says she doesn't miss her skating career. "I started so young," at age 5, she says. "After you do it for so many years ... you get tired of it. It's hard work. ... Not that I think I wouldn't be able to get my body back into shape, but I think that you have your glory days ... and after that, if you can't keep up or you take too much time off, that's enough," she says.

"I just feel like if I can't do what I did then, then it's just best not to do it."

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