Greatest African American skater ever is down and out...and loving it?

February 27, 2016 9:51 AM

"There’s a conventional narrative of how [1986 World Champion figure skater Debi] Thomas went from where she was to where she is — that of a talented figure undone by internal struggles and left penniless. But nothing is ever that simple with Thomas. "
posted by drlith (21 comments total)

Wow, I had no idea her fortunes had changed so drastically in such a short time. I always thought she was a success machine.

But maybe she is happy! I certainly hope so. Success isn't everything.
posted by tel3path at 10:30 AM on February 27, 2016

That was an interesting read, though it felt oddly truncated, stopped short in some vague way.

The author's description indicates that he "...covers poverty, inequality and social justice. He also writes about solutions to social problems." Something about that strikes me as sort of quaintly, earnestly naïve in a way I wouldn't expect from a reporter for a major newspaper.
posted by clockzero at 10:42 AM on February 27, 2016

I think that being an Olympic athlete in a high profile (but only in the Olympics!) sport would be a colossal mind-fuck. There's obviously other stuff going on here, but I'm surprised that any of them make it out of that experience intact.

Anyway, I wish her the best.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:50 AM on February 27, 2016

=(

She appears to be suffering from some kind of bipolar disorder.
posted by wuwei at 11:01 AM on February 27, 2016 [12 favorites]

I agree with wuwei, there's a mental illness that's tripping her up. A tragic tale and I hope someone can get her the help she needs.
posted by Ber at 11:14 AM on February 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

She was diagnosed with bipolar, but contested it at the board hearing over her medical license.
posted by tel3path at 11:28 AM on February 27, 2016

Man, you know, even if she is happy it's still a waste of some colossal talent. I always marvelled at how the hell somebody was able to be that high of an achiever in that many fields, and just keep climbing higher. Chemistry at Stanford during the Olympics! Followed by qualifying as a surgeon! I remember reading about her shortly after she had her first child, working in medicine, and promoting the health and nutritional benefits of beans with The Bean Project or whatever it was called. I couldn't believe all that was possible coming from just one person!

Just think what she could do if she were under treatment. I wish, in particular, that somebody had picked up on the fact she was ill before it became a point of contention in the hearing over her medical license. Or maybe they did but she didn't listen.
posted by tel3path at 11:51 AM on February 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

All I could think when I read this was "this woman is mentally ill."
posted by DarlingBri at 12:03 PM on February 27, 2016 [9 favorites]

She sounds as if she has crashed and burned, but still has ideas and ambition. Sometimes it is frustrating when your body and your mind aren't in sync. She is driven, but sometimes it is not enough. I hope she can find enough breathing space to find her way again.
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 1:01 PM on February 27, 2016

All I could think when I read this was "this woman is mentally ill."

Yes. I wouldn't call what she has "loving it" so much as "trying to hold it together."

I remember how amazed I was by her during her Olympic run, and how sad I was when she didn't make it. God that pressure must have been unbelievable. I didn't realize she'd had nose jobs to improve her chances . I had really loved ice-skating and she seemed like the future of it, who was going to blow up the stodgy/sexist crap that went with it, but after she lost and vanished from the sport, none of that happened. And I stopped watching it.

Now she's selling scammy gold futures (or trying to) and living in a really rough situation and clearly suffering from some kind of mental blocks. I wonder what her relationship with her family is like. Have they given up? Do they keep track of her? I hope they do.
posted by emjaybee at 1:12 PM on February 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is so sad. One beautiful early evening my wife and I were enjoying the lakefront view near Lake Point Tower here in Chicago when Debi Thomas (attending Northwestern at the time) came walking by with a little dog on leash. As puppies are wont to do, it pooped. Thomas's first inclination was to keep on walking but then she spied us just watching the whole thing, (she had caught us being a little star struck, furtive whispers and nudges, etc.) beamed us an hellaciously charming rueful grin and said, "I'll clean it up, I'll clean it up", which she did. This whole thing is getting a little Richard Coryish, best stop.
posted by Chitownfats at 1:36 PM on February 27, 2016

I hope she gets the help she needs for her condition. I kept thinking of Iris Chang as I read it--the pressure, the success, the conspiracy.
posted by persona au gratin at 2:14 PM on February 27, 2016

Wow. The last I ever heard of her is that she quit skating, became a doctor, and refused to speak about the bronze medal. I thought that's what she was still doing.
posted by asockpuppet at 2:43 PM on February 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

So so sad. I remember her duels with Witt--she was so incredible.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 3:01 PM on February 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

She sure was not the kind of skater you forget. I didn't think of her as "losing", I mean, she WON the bronze medal, what is that, chopped liver? I expected Witt to get the gold. Who cares which medal Debi Thomas got when she was at the very top of the sport anyway?

And now this. Of all people, you'd have thought she had the brightest future.
posted by tel3path at 3:34 PM on February 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

tel3path: she turned her freestyle part of the program (after being eliminated from gold) into an affecting and resounding victory of the human spirit. Witt's was a lackluster pop turn.
posted by Chitownfats at 5:35 PM on February 27, 2016

Oh, sure, I remember that one. She was the bomb. That didn't mean she was going to win gold; she was still the bomb.
posted by tel3path at 5:38 PM on February 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Our society is a beast that devours anyone, the poor, the middle class, even highly educated professionals. It doesn't matter who you are, the bottom is always there waiting for you, and one half our country believes that anyone trapped below the surface, just out of sight, deserves to be there.

There's at least a dozen different ways Debi Thomas could make a huge difference in people's lives, but she can't help anyone until someone helps her, but her problems are obviously too complex for anyone but professionals, and better for her to waste away than invest in a social safety net for reasons that only make sense to rich people.
posted by Beholder at 9:40 PM on February 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

This whole article was pretty shocking to me; I remember when she moved to Urbana (where the University of Illinois is) to practice medicine, and had assumed that she was still there. This Flickr page claims that she was still judging skating in the early 2000s.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:26 PM on February 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I remember that after the Olympics ended, she was going to attend medical school and I was so envious that this so-accomplished woman could still have so much ahead of her. She was a role model, for sure. A woman-of-color surgeon? Oh, hell yes! And now, to read this article today, I was just devastated. The difficulty seems to be that she needs to acknowledge her mental illness to herself, whatever it may be, and seek help for it.
posted by honey badger at 1:27 PM on February 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah, and the main barrier to acknowledging her illness seems to have been grandiosity, and the trouble is that grandiosity was working for her until it wasn't. Waving some quack sales-scam product around and saying I'm trying to change the world - that's all the more poignant coming from her. There was a certain point in her career where she *was* changing the world a little bit.
posted by tel3path at 3:09 PM on February 28, 2016