John Curry

John Anthony Curry, OBE (9 September 1949 – 15 April 1994)[2] was a British figure skater. He was the 1976 Olympic and World Champion. He was noted for combining ballet and modern dance influences into his skating.

John Curry OBE
Curry at the 1976 Olympics
Personal information
Full name	John Anthony Curry
Country represented	United Kingdom
Born	9 September 1949 Birmingham, Warwickshire, England[1]
Died	15 April 1994 (aged 44) Binton, Warwickshire, England
Height	180 cm (5 ft 11 in)[1]
Former coach	Carlo Fassi, Gustave Lussi, Arnold Gerschwiler
Skating club	Queens Ice Dance Club, London[1]
Retired	1976
Medal record Men's figure skating Representing  Great Britain Olympic Games 1976 Innsbruck Singles World Championships 1976 Gothenburg Singles 1975 Colorado Springs Singles European Championships 1976 Geneva Singles 1975 Copenhagen Singles 1974 Zagreb Singles

Early life

Curry was born on 9 September 1949 in Birmingham, England. He had two older brothers.[2] He was educated at Solihull School, an independent school in the West Midlands, and then at St Andrews, an independent boarding school in Somerset. As a child, Curry wanted to become a dancer, but his parents disapproved of dance as an activity for boys;[2][3] Instead, he began to take figure skating lessons under the guidance of Ken Vickers at the Summerhill Road rink in Birmingham.[2]

Skating career

After his father committed suicide when John was 16,[4] he moved to London to study with Arnold Gerschwiler, who coached him to his first British title in 1971. In 1972, Curry found an American sponsor who enabled him to study in the United States with Gus Lussi and Carlo Fassi.[1]

Competitive career

Fassi coached Curry to European, World, and Olympic titles in 1976.[1] He also won the British championships that year, giving him the coveted Grand Slam in figure skating with his four major titles in 1976.[5] In the same year, he was the flag bearer at the Winter Olympics for Great Britain[6] and was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 1976. He was the first figure skater from Great Britain to win Olympic gold.[5]

As an amateur competitor, Curry was noted for his ballet-like posture and extension, and his superb body control. Along with Canadian skater Toller Cranston, Curry was responsible for bringing the artistic and presentation aspects of men's figure skating to a new level. At the peak of his competitive career, Curry was also accomplished both at compulsory figures and the athletic (jumping) aspects of free skating.

During his 1976 Olympic free skate, he successfully landed a triple toe loop, a triple Salchow and a triple loop jump.[7][8] His performance is known to have garnered the highest score ever given during the era of the 6.0 scoring in figure skating.[9] He earned 105.9 points out of a possible 108 points from a panel of 9 international judges.[10] Only the judges from Canada and the Soviet Union did not place him first.[5] The judges' decisions are noteworthy because the silver medallist was Vladimir Kovalev of USSR and the bronze medallist was Toller Cranston of Canada.[11]

His skating was unusual in that his jumps were performed counter-clockwise but most of his spins (except flying spins) were performed clockwise. In his 1978 biography, Curry is clear that if he were to do it over, his choice would have been in favour of ballet due to its highly defined structure which was a basis for his ability to jump and spin in either direction thanks to his command of a true center line understanding.

Professional career

Following the 1976 World Championships, Curry turned professional and founded a touring skating company along the same lines as a traditional dance company.[12] Besides choreographing routines for the company, Curry commissioned works from such noted dance choreographers as Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Peter Martins and Twyla Tharp. Curry was reportedly a difficult person to get along with, and a dispute with the business managers of his company forced it to suspend operations in the mid-1980s. After that, Curry performed only rarely in public.

Curry's Broadway theatre credits include Icedancing (1978)[13] as a performer[14] and director and the 1980 revival of Brigadoon as an actor and the Roundabout Theatre 1989 revival of Privates on Parade as an actor.

Personal life

Before the 1976 World Championships, Curry was outed as gay by a German tabloid newspaper, Bild-Zeitung.[15] Other sources state that it was a reporter from the Associated Press immediately after his Olympic victory who was responsible.[3][16] It caused a brief scandal in Europe at the time, but Curry's sexual orientation was generally ignored by the press and public for many years afterwards.

In 1987, Curry was diagnosed with HIV, and in 1991 with AIDS. Before his death, he spoke to the press about both his disease and his sexual orientation. He spent the last years of his life with his mother. He died of an AIDS-related heart attack on 15 April 1994 in Binton, Warwickshire, aged 44.[2][17]

Donald Spoto’s authorized biography of actor Alan Bates stated that Curry and Bates had a two-year affair and that Curry died in Bates's arms.[18]

In 2018, a documentary on Curry's life and career, The Ice King, was released by Dogwoof Pictures.[19]

Programmes

Season	Short programme	Free skating	Exhibition
1975–1976	Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Sergei Rachmaninoff	Don Quixote by Ludwig Minkus	Scheherazade by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Results

International
Event	1969–70	1970–71	1971–72	1972–73	1973–74	1974–75	1975–76
Winter Olympics			10th				1st
World Champ.		14th	9th	4th	7th	3rd	1st
European Champ.	12th	7th	5th	4th	3rd	2nd	1st
St. Gervais		1st
National
British Champ.	2nd	1st		1st	1st	1st	1st

See also

• Larry Parnes

References

1. John Curry. sports-reference.com
2. Bird, Dennis L. (16 April 1994). "Obituary: John Curry". The Independent. London. Retrieved 22 August 2011.
3. Young, Graham (15 August 2014). "The extraordinary rise and fall of Birmingham's Olympic champion ice skater". BusinessLive. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
4. Goodwin, Daisy (27 July 2014). "Alone: The Triumph and Tragedy of John Curry by Bill Jones". The Sunday Times.
5. "John Curry". Encyclopaedia Britannica. 11 April 2019. Retrieved 14 June 2019.
6. Great Britain. sports-reference.com
7. Stevenson, Sandra (12 February 2010). "From the archive: Curry hits the gold standard Originally published on 12 February 1976". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
8. "Video 1976 Winter Olympic Free Skate".
9. White, Jim (5 February 2018). "Britain let John Curry's golden legacy at the Winter Olympics go to waste". The Telegraph. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
10. "Official IOC Website".
11. "Innsbruck 1976 Olympics". Olympic.org. Retrieved 14 June 2019.
12. Thomson, Candus (24 January 2008). "Curry's state of grace". The Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
13. John Curry – Scheherazade 1980 (Professional Version). Youtube
14. Edwards, Phil (2003). "The Real John Curry". Channel 4. Archived from the original on 4 April 2003.
15. "On this day 1976: John Curry skates to Olympic gold". BBC Online. 11 February 1976. Retrieved 22 August 2011.
16. O'Callahan, Eoin (17 February 2018). "Adam Rippon, John Curry and figure skating's complex history with gay athletes". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
17. Russell, Susan (10 June 2007). "John Curry: Triumph and Tragedy". International Figure Skating. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
18. Belonsky, Andrew (21 May 2007). "New Bio Outs Late, Great, "Gay" Alan Bates / Queerty". Queerty. Retrieved 25 September 2019.
19. The Ice King-Dogwoof-Documentary Distribution Retrieved 1 April 2018.

External links

• On this day – 1976: John Curry skates to Olympic gold BBC News