Manleywoman SkateCast

February 2026 Figure Skating podcast. An interview with 1956 Olympic Champion Tenley Albright. She's the first American woman to win Olympic gold in figure skating (but don't forget she also won silver in 1952!). Hers is a remarkable story of overcoming polio to stand on top of the podium, and then continuing on to become both an acclaimed surgeon and one of the most accomplished ambassadors for figure skating. 44 minutes.

December 2025 Figure Skating podcast. An interview with American Pairs skaters Alexa and Chris Knierim. Together, they were 3-time National Champions and 2018 Olympic Bronze medalists in the Team Event. After Chris' retirement, Alexa paired up with Brandon Frazier to win two more National titles, Gold in the 2022 Olympic Team Event, and Gold at the 2022 World Championships. 1 hour, 28 minutes.

December 2025 Figure Skating podcast. An interview with American Pairs skater Timothy LeDuc. Timothy is a two-time National Champion in Pairs with Ashley Cain, a 2022 Olympian, and the first out non-binary athlete assigned to the Winter Olympics. 1 hour, 8 minutes. 

July 2022 Figure Skating podcast. Ice skating analyst Jackie Wong's website at rockerskating.com is the top source for the latest news about the sport. But most critically he has a deep understanding of the judging system, which makes him an invaluable resource for those trying to understand the outcome of scores and placements. 1 hour, 1 minute, 45 seconds.

May 2022 Figure Skating podcast. With partner Guy Ravelle, Debbi Wilkes was a two-time Canadian National Champion, 1963 North American Champion, and the 1964 Olympic Silver medalist. After retiring from competition, Wilkes became a television ice skating analyst, an author, coach, and Skate Canada's Director of Marketing and Sponsorship. Ms Wilkes was inducted into the Canadian Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2001. 1 hour.

December 2021Figure Skating podcast. Courtney Jones is a World, European, and British ice dancing champion, and the only skater to win World Championships in Ice Dance with different partners. He's been an ice skating judge, an Olympic Team Leader, and creator of two  compulsory dances. And he designed the iconic Bolero costumes worn by Torvill and Dean for the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics. 1 hour, 19 minutes.

December 2021Figure skating podcast. Elizabeth Manley is a 3-time Canadian Champion, 2-time Olympian, the 1988 World Silver medalist, and the 1988 Olympic Silver medalist in women's figure skating. This Canadian Hall of Famer is also a commentator and blogger for ice skating and a mental health advocate. 1 hour, 3 minutes.

November 2014An interview with Parker Pennington. He won four US national titles (Juvenile, Intermediate, Novice, and Junior titles), is now a coach and choreographer, and the creator of SkateDanceDream. He discusses having Carol Heiss Jenkins as a coach, how he loves to help people any way he can, and how he was once a stunt double for Woody Allen. 34 minutes, 6 seconds.  

October 2014An interview with Tamara Moskvina, one of the most legendary coaches of all time in figure skating. She was a 5-time Soviet Champion in Singles, and 2-time Soviet Champion in Pairs with different partners: Alexander Gavrilov and Alexei Mishin. With Mishin she was the World Silver medalist and competed in the 1968 Olympics. Since becoming a coach, she's been a driving force behind the dominance of Russian Pair teams over the past several decades, having coached some of the best teams in skating: Valova & Vassiliev, Mishkutenok & Dmitriev, Kazakova & Dmitriev, Berezhnaya & Sikharulidze, and Kawaguchi & Smirnov. Moskvina talked about how she invented the Beillmann Spin, the 2002 Olympics pairs scandal, and how she broke her tooth on Mishin's knee. 53 minutes, 37 seconds.

September 2014An interview with Renee Roca. Roca was a three-time US National Champion in Ice Dance with different partners: she won the 1986 title with Donald Adair, and the 1993 and 1995 titles with Gorsha Sur. Her longevity in the sport is hard to top, spending 14 years in the Senior ranks. Roca is probably best known for twice missing out on the Olympics for incredible reasons. After retirement she moved on to become a very popular show skater, and is now a choreographer and coach. She talks about how she became successful after a relatively late start, the drama of the 1994 season, and why she enjoyed working with hockey players. 1 hour, 4 minutes, 37 seconds.

August 2014An interview with Brian Orser. This Canadian phenomenon was the Men's Canadian Champion from 1981 to 1988, was the 1987 World Champion, and the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Silver Medalist. He performed brilliantly in two Olympics in a row, which is especially impressive. He was also the first person to land three triple axels in one competition. Orser is now a coach of top skaters (including Yuna Kim, Yuzuru Hanyu, and Javier Fernandez to name a few), and the creator of the recent Peak Performance Skating App. Orser talks about his trading of quads with Jozef Sabovcik, his philosophy as a coach, and why those one-piece outfits from the 1980s were a bad idea. 1 hour, 6 minutes, 23 seconds.

July 2014 An interview with Tom Zakrajsek. Tom competed in Men's Singles and Pairs, then became a judge. But he's made the biggest impact as a coach. Known for his technical coaching, he has groomed many elite skaters over the years including Ryan Bradley, Rachel Flatt, Jeremy Abbott, Max Aaron, Brandon Mroz, and Mirai Nagasu. He was also the 2009 Professional Skater's Association Coach of the Year. He has a new website with a ton of great training tips at www.coachtomz.com. We talk about his idolization of Charlie Tickner, how he started as a coach with a very young Ryan Bradley, and his very detailed periodization plans for his students. 1 hour, 43 minutes.

June 2014An interview with Cecily Morrow. She's a coach and former student of some of the best coaches out there (Carlo Fassi, Gustave Lussi, and Natalia Dubova). But her main and lasting contribution to the sport of figure skating has been her in-depth recordings of the teachings of Gustave Lussi and Natalia Dubova, through the video series Systematic Figure Skating (in four volumes) and Stroking Exercises on Ice. These invaluable resources are imperative for any skater or coach. We talk about how she captured these videos, and what Gus Lussi would have thought of IJS today. 1 hour  

May 2014An interview with Ryan Bradley, the 2011 US Figure Skating Champion, 3 time Collegiate Champion, coach and one of the favorites on the show circuit for his charisma on ice. Ryan talks about how he's been able to develop that charisma and work with it, how he always wanted to be a "conversational skater," and the real reason why he decided to compete in the Collegiate Championships. 52 minutes, 08 seconds

April 2014An interview with Sjoukje Dijkstra, the 1964 Olympic champion in ladies' singles, the 1960 Olympic silver medalist, a three-time World champion (1962–1964), five-time European champion (1960–1964), and the six-time Dutch national champion (1959–1964). We talked about how she's glad she became a figure skater rather than a speed skater, traveling and training in London as a youngster, and how much hairspray it took to keep her hair big while competing. 40 minutes, 17 seconds

March 2014An interview with Sylvia Fontana, 5-time Italian Champion, 2-time Winter Olympian (for the 2002 Salt Lake City games and the 2006 Torino Games), show skater, coach, reality TV star, and founder of Karisma Sportswear with her husband american pair skater John Zimmerman. She talked about working with Carlo Fassi, why her cats didn't like her methods of warming up, and how she balances team coaching with her husband. 33 minutes, 29 seconds Thanks to Fiona Mcquarrie for transcribing these interview highlights: On her most embarrassing skating moment:  I want to say that it is probably the fact that I can’t hide my emotions very well. So even yesterday as Brandon [Foster] and Haven [Denney] were skating, it was just hard to maintain composure. After every one of my good performances, I would just start crying, and some of the audience or the people watching would wonder why without winning a gold medal I would break down in tears [laughs]. I’m not embarrassed but I definitely can’t hold my composure. On starting skating: My father was in construction, and that’s why I was born in New York, because he had a temporary job building a big sports center in New York City. Then when we moved to Italy he was building a sports center in Rome, and there was a mini-rink. And of all the sports in the center, I was attracted to that. I couldn’t go down stairs and they tell me I still wanted to see the people skate. And I see my little Sofia [her older daughter] just has the same focus when people skate, everything stops. Even better than Minnie Mouse [laughs]. I have US citizenship, and that made it easier when I had to choose a country to train in. No visas, nothing like that. Carlo Fassi at the time was training in Lake Arrowhead and therefore I selected the US for my site of training. In Rome it was really difficult to get a good systematic training schedule. So I moved to the US to improve my skills and really learn the triples. And when I met John [Zimmerman, her husband], he was funny, he was like...and I was, I am, I am a US citizen. But I didn’t speak English very well so he couldn’t understand how that could be possible [laughs]. On being an Italian skater and training in the US: At the time there was [backlash from the Italian federation] but now they’re more used to understanding that some of our infrastructure and coaching has gotten better throughout the years, but wasn’t up to par with what other countries had. And when I moved I was kind of like the first one to have done that. And Carolina [Kostner] had always trained outside of Italy, and now Valentina Marchei is in Detroit. There is always part, I think, of the Italian federation and the Italian coaching staff that looks at you a little bit with disappointment because you’re emigrating, but I think now that Italy is so competitive, they are understanding how one athlete is driven and how to support them in their decision. So it’s better now. But at the time it was a little challenging. I was going to Carlo at first, so it was really emigrating to skate with an Italian, so it was kind of okay [laughs]. And then unfortunately Carlo passed away, so that’s when I moved my coaching to Frank Carroll and Evelyn Kramer. On whether she could have skated for the US: I could have [laughs] but it’s much harder. Yesterday I saw the women’s short program and it’s such a deep field, it’s awesome. It’s beautiful to watch. For a very short moment John was without a partner and we had a mini-tryout, so we could have skated for the US in pairs, but I had just gotten all my triple jumps, and I skate lefty. And we never fight, but we had our first fight 30 minutes after skating together, and we didn’t think it was a good idea [laughs]. On being interested in ice dance: I was always a singles skater at heart. I love pairs, I love watching pairs, and now with John we’re coaching pair teams. And I’m learning so many more aspects of choreographing pairs and what to look in a pair team as far as choreography, I wouldn’t touch the technical part. I do think it’s very interesting to have two people on the ice creating a story, I love that aspect. But for me to skate — I enjoy skating with John and it’s very special to do all these shows, but even then sometimes, I’m like, you took off, wait for me [laughs]. I’m a singles skater that way. On working with Carlo Fassi: He had an aura about himself. He had a lot of charisma. He had that personality where it wasn’t so much what he would say to you, what correction he would give to you, but how. Just the tone of his voice, the command, it almost transferred so much confidence. He knew exactly how to make you better. And to me, that is how I remember him as a young woman growing up. He gave me a lot of confidence, and whenever I felt that he believed in me, it made me believe in myself that much more. And Christa Fassi, I just saw her at Italian nationals, and Christa is a very very good coach and still coaches full out, I have very fond memories of them. It was very hard [when Carlo passed away], I had just lost my father that year, and then Carlo, that was very difficult. On training with Frank Carroll, who at the time was coaching Michelle Kwan: It was awesome. I was very much looking up to Angela Nikodinov, Nicole Bobek, and Michelle — it was really the epicentre of the skating world at the time. I learned a lot from the coaches and from the skaters. Now in coaching I find myself relating stories of training times with Michelle, and how she would start off a long program and maybe missing her first jump but continuing the program as if that never happened, in practice as she would do it [in competition]. And just her work ethic, how she would warm up and cool off. She definitely was a huge role model for all of us training there. And it’s sad that some of the kids now, they are, oh, Michelle Kwan, I heard about her [laughs], and I always say, go and research on YouTube because she is an institution for our sport, she’s an icon. On missing the 1998 Olympic team: I had a very poor national championship. I skated very poorly. It’s so funny now watching an Olympic trial, it’s a different stage when you are competing at a nationals to qualify for the Olympics. I had qualified Italy to be in the Olympics at a competition in August, at the time it was the Vienna Cup, and I was the very favorite to go. And I just didn’t perform well at all, the nerves just got the best of me. And I contemplated quitting, because that’s another four years [to the next Olympics], and I had already gone to Worlds, so that’s another four years to invest into your craft, and I was already 21 so that’s not very young. And I’m very glad that I stayed in because I did two more Olympics [laughs]. It was not the right time, but at the time it was so devastating. And I see so many things going through skaters’ faces now, like, well, you can’t get up from this. But you do, and it makes you stronger. And everything in your career as a skater makes you stronger as a person later. On 2001 Worlds, where she placed 10th after being 19th the year before: I worked very very hard. I had my triples thanks to Carlo, Frank and Evelyn. Then I moved to Connecticut to be closer to John but also to be under the guidance of Galina [Zmievskaya]. Galina really put so much work into improving my skating and I really owe it to her and Nina [Petrenko] and Viktor [Petrenko] to have improved so much. And I was emotionally ready. As I was saying before, as an athlete I grew that mental toughness, and they were behind me to improve my skating to where I needed to be to be up to par with that top 10. It’s really tough to get in to the top 10 [laughs] but I felt - my skills, when being raised in Rome, technically I had so many things that weren’t perfect. And so we had to make do with some things. And Galina tried to improve my technique a little bit without completely starting over, because we didn’t have the time, and she was very successful at that, very smart. On placing 10th at the 2002 Olympics: I wasn’t thrilled because I think — I’m a little bit of a perfectionist, and I think I made two mistakes. One big mistake and one slight mistake, and I knew I could skate better, so that’s why I was unhappy with myself. I wasn’t that unhappy with the score, I wasn’t that type of skater that really focused on the score, but I was really crying only when I skated my best [laughs]. On competing in the 2006 Olympics in Torino: I saw the NBC commercial, I don’t remember how many days it was but it was like 154 days until the Olympics, and they were showing all parts of my country, with the Olympic circles. And something came onto me, I have to try. I was so far back and I was not in shape at all, I had never done triple flip or triple lutz in four years. And I was touring in Broadway on Ice with Brian Boitano and it was in theatres, with very small ice. So I asked Brian, so how was it to come back? And he said, very difficult, but it was a good challenge. So it was good that he was there. And I didn’t want to even admit in my brain that I had thought about coming back, because we had bought a house and I was in a different phase of my life. So I said, I’m just going to start training silently, on my own, and see where I go. And John was on tour in Stars on Ice. So my tour was done in March, so I said, in June, when John comes back, if I am in good shape, maybe I’ll verbalize it out loud [laughs]. And it was good. The drive that you have in training for the Olympics is amazing. And [with the new judging system in 2006] I had never trained some of the required positions in the spins. So when I trained from March to June, I turned on the heaters and did hot yoga in the house. The cats hated me going back to the Olympics, they were dying [laughs]. Obviously I didn’t place as well [as in the 2002 Olympics], I also had several injuries from being 29 and training all these new things. By the time I got to

February 2014An interview with the legendary Dick Button. What hasn't he done? He's practically the father of our sport (if Jackson Haines were Grandfather). The two-time Olympic Gold medalist invented many of the jumps and spins we see today, and he invented figure skating commentary. He's a skater, producer, commentator, actor, truth-seeker, hall-of-famer, stirrer-upper, and figure skating's biggest fan. This first episode focuses on his new book Push Dick’s Button, a fantastic book that is a really wonderful conversation on skating. 55 minutes, 50 seconds. [display_podcast] AM: Allison ManleyDB: Dick Button AM:  Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Manleywoman Skatecast. I’m your host, Allison Manley, and this is Episode 73, an interview with Dick Button. That’s right!  You heard it, here it is! Any longtime fan of my podcast knows I have been chasing this interview for years. Years! And it only took writing a poem, some polite stalking, a pinch of begging, and quite a bit of persistence and tenacity — and let’s face it, it doesn’t hurt that he was trying to spread the word about his new book. All I know is that I’m thrilled to have been finally able to interview him. So, in case you don’t know his many accomplishments, I’m going to list them off first. Here is the general overview of what Dick Button has done for this sport. He was the first skater to have won the men’s novice, junior and senior titles in three consecutive years. He was the first skater to land a double axel. He was the first skater to land a triple jump, which was a triple loop, and the first male skater to perform a camel spin. And he was the inventor of the flying camel spin, also known as the Button camel. He’s the only American to win the European title. He’s the first American world champion, the first American to win the Olympic title in figure skating, the first and only American back-to-back champion. He is the first and only American skater to simultaneously hold all of the following titles: national, North American, European, World and Olympic. That’s five. He’s the youngest man to win the Olympic title in figure skating, at age 18, and it shocks me still that this record stands today. He is the winner of the Sullivan Award. In the 1960s he began doing television commentary, and has been gracing our television sets for decades since. He was inducted into the World Skating Hall of Fame in 1976, which was the initial class. He won an Emmy Award in 1981 for outstanding sports personality/analyst. He was a producer of skating shows including The Superstars, which was the first of the reality shows. He starred in movies and on television, and on the stage. The autobiography he wrote in 1955 is a fount of knowledge, and is incredibly well written. I highly recommend that you all find a copy and give it a read. And, of course, he is the author very recently of Push Dick’s Button, a fantastic book that is a really wonderful conversation on skating. Dick and I decided to do this interview in two parts. The first will be focused on his book and all the ideas within. The second part will focus more on his career and life in skating, and will follow at a later date to be determined.  Anyone who knows my podcast knows that I’ve been dying to capture his voice on tape for the fans. So, ladies and gentlemen, may I present — Dick Button. ----- AM:  All right, Dick Button, are you ready? DB: I am. AM: So, thank you so much for your book. It’s wonderful. I have to ask, why did you write it at this time? DB: And my question to you is, what do you mean by “at this time”? Are you saying that I’m a very old poop [laughs] and therefore don’t have any understanding of what the hell is going on in today’s world? Or are you asking it because it’s been a long time since I have written? I wrote a book in 1952 or 1954, when I was a very young person, and then I did one other paperback kind of book a couple of years later. I don't understand the question “at this time”?  I mean, that does that mean? Am I missing something? AM: I guess it is curious that it has been such a long time. I do actually have the book from the 1950s, and I think it’s interesting that the book that you chose to release now, rather than being a biography or an autobiography, is such a conversational book. So I suspect that you felt the need to have this conversation, so that’s why I’m asking. Is skating frustrating you to the point where you felt like you had to tell these opinions? DB: I’ll tell you what it really is. Number one, it was in the past exceedingly difficult for me to write. The advent of the computer and the lectures that I give on gardening introduced me to an entire new way to write. If you write on your computer, you can erase things, you can change things, you can move things around, and you don’t have to rewrite painfully every single word. So the system and the ability to write was exceedingly pleasant. Then I also have a very good friend who had gotten me a major contract ten years ago, that was with Simon and Schuster, and I had a great opportunity to write a very good book at a very high-priced contract. And that was at the same time that I had gone skating on New Year’s Eve, and fell and fractured my skull, and got concussions and lost the hearing in my left ear. And I also had a co-writer with me, and it didn’t work. We just didn’t work out. In other words, it was too much. I couldn’t handle it at that time. It took me about two or three years to really get my act together and to recoup from that fall. So the important thing was, this same lady, who is a great friend of mine and who got me that contract, her name is Pat Eisemann-Logan — I finally said to her, Pat, what can I do for you? And she said, I’ll tell you what you can do. I would like it if you would come and sit on the couch next to me and tell me what the heck is going on with what we are watching. So I sat down one day and I just wrote out a couple of things, a few chapters, and she said, yeah, that’s terrific. And I love it because, number one, it doesn’t have to be The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire of Skating. It is a simple conversation. Conversations are meant to be interrupted, to have answers, to have somebody kvetch about it. Conversations can range from any subject to any subject, and that’s why I like the idea of this. I did not want to do a history of skating, which others have done before this, and I did not wish to do a biography. I think there’s far too much more of great interest around the world of skating. I wanted to do what subjects came up to my mind, what it is to watch for at the Olympics, and most of the questions you’ve asked me about this are  all in that book. So it was a very pleasant experience for me, I enjoyed it no end, and I’m happy to have done it and done it the way I did. Although I will tell you that there are three books that you write and three skating programs that you skate and three pictures that you paint.  They are, number one, the book you plan, number two, the book you do, and number three, the book you wish you’d done [laughs]. So if you can put up with that, you’re a good gal. AM: It does seem to have worked out that this is the book you wish you had done. You seem very pleased with it. DB: Oh, yes, but there’s a lot of things that I . . .  listen, if I had started with all the things I made notes of, I would have had six more volumes [laughs]. I don’t think so. AM: Well, I do love the fact that even though it’s not biographical, that you have a lot of sprinklings of your history in there. I mean, I think that’s a great addition to the opinion pieces that are in there, because there’s definitely opinions in there as well. DB: Well, it’s a conversation. It covers whatever’s on your mind. The one chapter that many people have criticized, they say, we know what jumps are, you don’t have to put a chapter in there saying the different jumps. But my doctor said to me, "Dick, my daughter skates and we all really like watching the skating, but I can’t tell one jump from another, how can I do that?" And it annoyed him. So I put in this brief explanation, if you don’t know what a jump is, there’s three or four or five or six pages of it, and if you already know which jumps are which — skip over it! This is not the end of the world book. This is not the end of the world subject. It is a conversational piece. And I hope like the devil that people can figure out that they can learn something from it. Because I enjoyed very much doing it. AM: Well, great. And I do want to ask you some questions about it, obviously without giving away too much, because people should buy it and read it, of course [laughs]. DB: [laughs] Well, we don’t have long enough on this conversation, so go ahead and spring your questions. AM: Well, one of the things you are concerned about is losing the theatrical part of skating. And I wonder, from a competitive standpoint, how you think it can be preserved. There are a lot of people trying to preserve it outside of competition, but in the competitive arena, what are your thoughts on that? DB: Let me also start out by saying that competition, the Olympic Games which we’re about to start into in another day or two — they get the most audience. Figure skating and dancing, they’re kissing cousins, and figure skaters have the opportunity to become instantly famous and household names. Dancers don’t have that. So if a figure skater has that opportunity, and the Olympic competition is there, it’s marvelous that they take part and do it. However, figure skating is a complete sport. It’s a sport that has music, choreography, costuming, performance level, story level — it has so many different aspects that are intimately intertwined with each other. Figure skating is theatre, and I don’t care who tells me that it’s not. The head of the ISU, the head of the Olympic Committee, and a lot of guys get all honked about it and say it’s not a sport. Well, don

I was asked to be a figure skating expert on John Letherby's show on TSN 1050 Radio Toronto. Listen to my preview of the Olympic Pairs Free Skate. 

January 2014A compilation of short, live, off-the-cuff interviews with whomever I encountered at the 2014 United States Figure Skating Championships in Boston, MA. Interviews include choreographer and coach Doug Mattis, Peter Biver, Dick Button, Hayes Jenkins, David Jenkins and Carol Heiss, Jirina Ribbins, the mother/son team of Stan and Fran, some local fans and arena staff, Snowplow Sam (the mascot!) and more.  31 minutes, 53 seconds.

December 2013An interview with Doug Wilson, the ABC Producer and Director that I interviewed in 2008 on SkateCast #16. He contacted me again to talk about his new book, "The World Was Our Stage: Spanning the Globe with ABC Sports." It's full of wonderful stories of not only his coverage of figure skating, but so many sports and sports moments that are ingrained in our culture and memory. He talks about the changing role of female commentators, being able to talk with Irina Rodnina after the Iron Curtain fell, and why we should all listen to Carol Heiss. 1 hour, 06 minutes, 37 seconds.