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The 1963 European Figure Skating Championships


From February 5 to 9, 1963, it snowed something fierce in Hungary but not sleet, nor snow could keep the people of Budapest away from the 1963 European Figure Skating Championships, held at the newly opened open-air Kisstadion, which boasted seating for fifteen thousand.

Photo courtesy Elaine Hooper, BIS Archive

The event played host to a stunning ice dance upset and some extremely erratic judging in multiple disciplines. Skaters from four different nations won in the four disciplines contested and huge crowds hung on every judge's mark, ready to cheer and boo along when their favourites were done right or wrong by those who determined their fates. Today on Skate Guard, we will take a look back at this historic competition!


Four of Hungary's six-member team at the 1963 European Championships

THE MEN'S COMPETITION

Manfred Schnelldorfer

Twenty-six-year-old 1962 European and World Silver Medallist Karol Divín missed the 1963 European Championships due to a sprained right instep during training in Bratislava. His absence made defending European Champion Alain Calmat the heavy favourite. The school figures - delayed partway through due to a blinding snowstorm - saw Calmat come from behind to defeat West Germany's Manfred Schnelldorfer six judges to three. The almost fourteen-point margin between them was considerable but not insurmountable.

British judge Geoffrey Yates, a 1936 Olympian who had fought on the beaches of Normandy during World War II, came under fire for placing Austria's Emmerich Danzer twelfth in the figures when the majority of the judging panel had him third. By the time the men were set to take the ice for the free skate, the snowstorm had subsided but the fog was so thick that many competitors had trouble breathing.

Top: Alain Calmat. Bottom: Sepp Schönmetzler. Photo courtesy "Winter Sports" magazine. 

Alain Calmat - a pupil of legendary French coach Jacqueline Vaudecrane - was far from outstanding in the free skate. He appeared nervous and missed crucial jumping passes early on in his performance. After putting a hand down on a triple loop attempt, he rebounded to end on a high note and earn seven 5.9s. Schnelldorfer's program featured double Axels and Lutzes but the judges weren't generous with the second mark.

Photo courtesy Elaine Hooper, BIS Archive

Six of the nine judges placed Alain Calmat in free skating, while the East German judge tied him with Manfred Schnelldorfer and the West German judge placed Schnelldorfer ahead of Calmat. Ever the contrarian, Geoffrey Yates gave first place in free skating to Schnelldorfer's teammate Sepp Schönmetzler, who landed a clean triple loop. In the end, Calmat ended up with the gold medal, Schelldorfer the silver and Danzer the bronze in a field of twenty-one. Schnelldorfer's medal win was particularly impressive in that two days before departing from Garmisch-Partenkirchen and travelling by bus through Vienna to Budapest, he had caught a nasty head and stomach cold and developed a dangerously high fever. When he arrived, he missed valuable training time while he recovered in bed.

THE ICE DANCE COMPETITION



Fresh off their first World title win, Czechoslovakian siblings Eva Romanová and Pavel Roman were brought down to earth with a crushing defeat in the ice dance competition in Budapest. Although six of the seven judges had them first in the free dance, the Czechs lost their title in the compulsory dances four judges to three to Great Britain's Linda Shearman and Michael Phillips. The dances were the Foxtrot, Westminster Waltz, Kilian and Argentine Tango.


Photo courtesy "Winter Sports" magazine

Linda Shearman and Michael Phillips had finished third at the European Championships in 1961 and second in 1962. They hailed from Birmingham but trained in Liverpool with coach Len Liggett. Their teammates Janet Sawbridge and David Hickinbottom, who took the bronze, had only been skating together for less than a year and were competing in their first international competition together. They trained at Queen's with Gladys Hogg and Harry Francis.

Photo courtesy Elaine Hooper, BIS Archive

In her book "Figure Skating History: The Evolution Of Dance On Ice", Lynn Copley-Graves recalled, "German TV broadcast all 13 free dances... A hairline decision in the place majority scoring system bumped the Hungarians [György Korda and Pál Vásárhelyi] up to fourth and knocked [Mary] Parry/[Roy] Mason down to fifth despite higher marks... Linda Shearman and Michael Phillips abandoned the 1962 controversial number for a polished program in the Courtney Jones' English-style tradition. The narrow margin of their 5.8's and 5.9's surrounded the air with suspense as the Czechs took the ice. Eva and Pavel, with a new free not so artistic as the last, but more original than that of Linda and Michael, placed first in the free dance... Only the West German judge, Dr. Freimut Stein, placed Shearman/Phillips first. The final results were so close it took an hour to tally the results. Some officials began preparing to celebrate a Czech victory, but Eva and Pavel's marks could not overcome the compulsory lead and upset of the British Champions." Switzerland's Marlyse Fornachon and Charly Pichard - students of Doreen Denny - placed sixth ahead of seven other teams from Czechoslovakia, France, West Germany, Austria and East Germany. Not long after, Denny was hired to teach Princess Grace of Monaco how to skate at Villars.

THE WOMEN'S COMPETITION


Sjoukje Dijkstra

In the women's competition in Budapest, there was Sjoukje Dijkstra... and everyone else. Coached by Arnold Gerschwiler, the young Dutch skater dominated the women's event from start to finish, placing first on every judge's scorecard on her way to her fourth consecutive European title. She wracked up an almost forty-five point lead in figures, trailed by Austria's Regine Heitzer.

Photo courtesy Elaine Hooper, BIS Archive

Sjoukje Dijkstra's performance in the free skating, which featured a fine double Axel, was as impressive as her effort in the figures. Geoffrey Yates was the only judge who dared place France's Nicole Hassler, who skated cleanly to Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony", ahead of Dijkstra. With a strong free skating performance, Czechoslovakian 'housewife' Jana Mrázková narrowly lost out on a medal to Hassler and Regine Heitzer. The latter medallist skated poorly in the free skate, falling badly on a double Lutz and two-footing a double Axel attempt. British skaters Sally-Anne Stapleford, Diana Clifton-Peach and Jacqueline Harbord placed fifth through seventh and in second to last place in her second trip to the European Championships was a young Tamara Bratus (Moskvina). In contrast to the other disciplines, the women's event was the only one to manage to avoid the snow from start to finish.

THE PAIRS COMPETITION


The pairs competition in Budapest marked the second trial of a two-phase pairs competition by the International Skating Union. In the September 30, 2015 Skate Guard blog "The Short Program Revisited", Sonia Bianchetti Garbato" explained that the event "consisted of two performances on different days... with performances being marked using the open system and with the result of the first performance being announced... The trial proved not to be so satisfactory, with more or less the same results in the two performances with a negative effect on the competitors having to perform the same program twice and generally, with a lower level of performance the second time."

Tatiana Zhuk and Alexander Gavrilov (left) and Marika Kilius and Hans-Jürgen Bäumler (right) 

The judging was as erratic as the skating was disappointing. Marika Kilius and Hans-Jürgen Bäumler of West Germany soundly defeated Soviets Ludmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov in both phases of the event for the gold, but some - including Heinz Magerlein - felt that an uncharacteristically poor performance by the Soviets at home at their National Championships in Moscow had damned them in the eyes of the judges before they even stepped foot on the ice in Budapest.

Marika Kilius and Hans-Jürgen Bäumler

There was no denying that Marika Kilius and Hans-Jürgen Bäumler had skated two technically outstanding programs. All nine judges gave them 5.9s for their second performance. That said, the Protopopovs possessed the whole package - something a twenty-one-year-old and nineteen-year-old necessarily didn't. In his book "Triumph On Ice", Heinz Magerlein asserted that Kilius and Bäumler's performances were "admirable" but that the Protopopovs had skated with "harmony, tranquility and elegance [with] the highlights, lifting jumps... the lasso, the loop jumps, etc. and pirouettes balanced and harmoniously integrated into an overall process."

Photo courtesy Elaine Hooper, BIS Archive

The fact of the matter was that the judging in the pairs event in Budapest was all over the freaking place. In the first performance of the free skate, the Polish judge had bronze medallists Tatiana Zhuk and Alexander Gavrilov eleventh. Fourth-place finishers Margit Senf and Peter Göbel of East Germany were too placed eleventh in that first performance by the judge from Switzerland. Twelfth-place finishers Galina Sedova and Georgi Proskurin of the Soviet Union received marks ranging from third through thirteenth in the first performance while fifth-place finishers Milada Kubíková and Jaroslav Votruba of Czechoslovakia's ordinals in the second performance ranged from fourth to twelfth. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The second trial of a two-program pairs event at the European Championships in Budapest was simply a disaster. It didn't help that the weather was awful. In the first round of competition, it was snowing so hard that the ice had to swept after every performance.

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on FacebookTwitterPinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of "Jackson Haines: The Skating King" and pre-ordering "Sequins, Scandals & Salchows: Figure Skating in the 1980s", which will be released this fall where books are sold: https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.