YOUNG STARS OF THE ICE TOO OLD AT 25

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 141, 2 July 1937, Page 14

YOUNG STARS OF THE ICE TOO OLD AT 25

Fifteen young girls of eight nationalities recently competed in London for the women 's flgure-skating championship of the world, the title falling to 16-year-old C'ecilia Colledge. Sixteen seems an early age to be world champion of anything, says an English writer, but figure skating produces its prodigies in their early teens, and casts them aside when they have turned 20. Sixteen, in fact, is the prime of life for those short-lived champions. After that age the bones bcgin to set, the body loses its childish suppleness, balance becomes less sure, falls more dangerous. In flgure-skating, a girl is too old at 25. So, in this championship, we find a group of youngsters from 12 to 18, who, in other circumstances, would still be adolescent nobodies at school, but, who for these few years are leading the cosmopolitan lives and receiving the flattery and adulation of film stars. Championship flgure-skating is a sport (if you can call it that — this queer mixture of supernatural skill, showmanship and deadly rivalry) only for the children of the well-to-do. It is impossible for a child to reach cham-

CECILIA COLLEDGE pionship standard unless her parcuts or backers. are willing to speud at least £2000 on her trainiug. Sooie of theui have cost £5000 aud more to produce. In returu for that, if she reaches championship class, she will have six or eight years of film-star existenee — competitiorts, exhibitions, foreigu travel, publjcity, and extravagant adulation. Then, unless she goes iuto pic-; tures lilie Sonja Henie, the former world 's champion, or turns prof essional, she is flnished. She must start some other career, or, from the age of 20 onwards, liye on the nostalgic memory of her glorious past. The singularly unchildlike life that these children lead makes most of theui seem far older tlian their years. They are poised, sophisticated, temperamental. • • Heading the list of youngsters in the British ' team, Cecilia- Colledge — tall, long-limbed, fuzzy-haired, her statuesque tigure and magnificent teeth her chief claims to beauty- — has. borue her fame and importance pretty well. At six years old she was taken to the Pyrenees for a winter sports holiday, wont on the ice for the first timc. At seven she watc^ied a flgure-skating championship, and decided her one ambition was to win it. Since then her life has been a round of training, competitions, exhibitions, winters in Switzerland, nerve-wracking champiouships all over Europe, mayorat receptions, banquets, saying a few words into the microphone, showing her pretty teeth to the caniera, signing autographs, planning the overthrow of the liow-retired world champion Sonja Henie." . . Her life is too public, too crowded, to leavei tinie for school. She ■ does lessons at home as she can fit them in.