Jeannette Eleanor Altwegg CBE (married name: Wirz; born 8 September 1930 in Mumbai, India)^[1] is a British figure skater. She is the 1952 Olympic champion in ladies' singles, the 1948 Olympic bronze medalist, the 1951 World champion, and the 1951 & 1952 European champion.

Altwegg was born in Mumbai, India and raised in Lancashire, the daughter of a British mother and Swiss father.^[1]

Altwegg was a competitive tennis player, reaching the junior finals at Wimbledon in 1947 before giving up the sport to focus on skating. She was known for her strong compulsory figures.^[1]

Her win at the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo was the first individual gold medal won by a British woman in the Winter Olympics. Her achievement as a British female individual Winter Olympics gold medalist was not matched until the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver when Amy Williams won gold in Skeleton.^[2] She remains the only British woman to have won two individual medals (gold and bronze) at the Winter Olympics.

After her Olympic victory, Altwegg bypassed a lucrative professional career due to a knee injury.^[1] She went to work in Pestalozzi Children's Village in Switzerland^[3] and married Marc Wirz, the brother of Swiss skater Susi Wirz.^[1] They had four children and divorced in 1973.^[1] Their daughter Christina Wirz was a member of the Swiss 1983 World champion and European bronze medalist curling team.^[4]

Honours

In 1953 she was awarded the CBE.

She was inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 1993.^[5]

Results

References

External links

• Profile at Olympic.org
• Sports-reference profile

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