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Janet Lynn Nowicki, known athletically as Janet
Lynn, is a figure skating|figure skater and an
Olympic bronze medalist.

Born Janet Nowicki in Chicago on April 6, 1953,
the future champion began to skate almost as soon
as she could walk and took part in her first
exhibition performance at the age of four in a
group number at Chicago Stadium. By age seven, she
was living away from home part of the year,
staying with the slightly older skater Jada
Steinke to be close to her coach Slavka Kohout,
who worked out of Rockton, Illinois, but her
close-knit family was never far away. She used her
middle name Lynn instead of Nowicki, which was
constantly being misspelled and mispronounced.
Janet was always forthright about the name change;
in her own mind her name was still Nowicki. 

In 1964, at 11, she became the youngest skater to
pass the rigorous eighth and final test
administered by the United States Figure Skating
Association, and two years later she won the U.S.
Junior Ladies Championship at Berkeley,
California.  At that competition she landed a
triple salchow jump, which at the time was rarely
performed by female skaters, giving early evidence
of a jumping ability that was to thrill audiences
and impress judges for years to come. In later
years she was also one of the first female skaters
to include a triple toe loop jump|toe loop in her
programs.

Moving up to senior level, Lynn gained 3rd place
at the 1968 U.S. Championships, which qualified
her to compete at the 1968 Winter Olympics in
Grenoble, France, where she placed 9th.  At the
time she was 14 years old and it was her first
major international competition.  She also placed
9th at her first World Figure Skating
Championships|World Championships in 1968.

She vaulted into 1st place at the 1969 U.S.
Championships, bypassing her competition. That
year she beat Canada's Karen Magnussen for the
North American title but had disappointing results
in the World Championships. Despite the absence of
both Magnussen and Czechoslovakia's Hana Maskova
due to injuries, Lynn was unable to do better than
5th place, falling behind Julie Lynn Holmes, in
4th, whom she had beaten for the national title.
Gabriele Seyfert of East Germany took the gold
medal. 

The World Championships were to remain a problem
for her. Although she continued to reign as U.S.
Champion, something always seemed to go wrong at
Worlds. In 1970, Seyfert and Austria's Beatrix
Schuba were again in 1st and 2nd place, while
Holmes moved up to 3rd and Lynn dropped back to
6th. Part of the problem was an inconsistency in
compulsory figures, which meant that she always
had to make up ground in the free skating. Lynn
made an effort to remedy this weakness by working
with the great New York-based coach Pierre Brunet,
who had previously had World Champions Carol Heiss
and Donald Jackson under his tutelage. At the 1971
World Championships, she placed 5th in figures and
skated well in the free skating to place 4th
overall, while Schuba took the gold, Holmes the
silver and Magnussen the bronze. 

The year 1972 brought both World and Olympic
challenges. Lynn beat Holmes for the national
title for the fourth year in a row, and there were
widespread predictions that she would finally take
not only World but Olympic gold, especially
because of Schuba's weakness in free skating.
Schuba's lackluster performance at Lyon, France
the previous year had even drawn boos, but she won
the championship based on her enormous lead in the
compulsory figures. 

At the 1972 Winter Olympics at Sapporo, Japan,
Lynn placed a disappointing 4th in the compulsory
figures.  Once again Schuba's technical mastery in
this discipline was very strong; although she
placed only 7th in the free skating, her large
lead from the figures enabled her to take the gold
medal. Magnussen won the silver and Lynn was left
with the bronze, an order of finish repeated at
the 1972 World Championships in Calgary, Canada.  



By this time, international-level disappointments
had taken their toll, and Lynn was also struggling
with her weight and lack of motivation that nearly
caused her to quit skating.  But she had always
had a very strong Christian faith and a belief
that God had given her a gift for skating with an
intention that she use it.  After considerable
soul-searching, she continued, taking her fifth
National title in 1973. With Schuba's retirement
and the devaluation of compulsory figures caused
by the addition of the short program to
competitions, only Magnussen seemed to stand in
her way. 

At the 1973 World Championships, Lynn skated her
best figures ever, taking 2nd in that discipline,
but in the newly-introduced short program of
required jumps and spins, which she had been
expected to win, two falls landed her in 12th
position. She came out on top in free skating, but
the terrible short program kept her from the gold.
A silver medal would mark the end of Lynn's
amateur career. 

Lynn's international-level travails had not dimmed
her country's affection for her.  Her popularity
was such that the Ice Follies offered her a
three-year contract for $1,455,000, which made her
the highest-paid female professional athlete of
the time. She proved to be the kind of draw she
was expected to be, putting the Ice Follies on a
much firmer basis in its rivalry with the Ice
Capades. In 1974, Janet Lynn finally took the top
spot in a World competition, becoming the World
Professional Champion in an event created by
promoter Dick Button to showcase her.



Lynn's professional career was cut short after
only two years by problems with allergy-related
asthma exacerbated by the cold, damp air in
skating rinks.  In 1975, she retired from skating,
married Rick Salomon, and started a family.

In the early 1980's, with her asthma under
control, she returned to skate professionally for
a few years.  She again appeared in Button's
professional competitions and co-starred with John
Curry in his made-for-TV ice ballet, "The Snow
Queen".

Over the years, Lynn has also worked as a
Christian motivational speaker.

==Legacy==
The contrast between Lynn and Beatrix Schuba was
one of the reasons why the International Skating
Union devaluated the weight of compulsory figures
in competition by introducing the short program. 
Since compulsory figures were rarely televised and
were not well-understood by the general public,
television audiences were confused and angry when
superior free skaters such as Lynn consistently
lost competitions to mediocre free skaters such as
Schuba.  

In spite of her early reputation in the sport as a
precocious and athletic jumper, today Janet Lynn
is best remembered for the gracefulness and easy
movement of her skating, for her use of the full
body to express her music, for the integration of
the jumps with the choreography, and for the
spiritual approach she brought to her
performances. 

==References==
*Janet Lynn:  Peace + Love.  ISBN 0-88419-069-2.
*Janet Lynn Salomon: 
http://www.profam.org/pub/fia/fia_1502.htm Family,
Faith, and Freedom