Talk:Sharon Monsky

Untitled

There is some concern about the skating portion of this article. It's possible it's being misunderstood as saying Monsky was in the Olympics. But that's not what it actually says.x 00:11, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

• I understand that the article doesn't say she competed at the Olympics. But, as someone who knows something about figure skating, I don't know what the "Senior Ladies Gold Medal Compulsory Skating Award" refers to. I am guessing this most likely means that Monsky passed her 8th compulsory figures test, which would have qualified her to compete as a senior lady; the USFSA used to award "gold medals" to any skater who did so, but there were dozens of skaters who did this every year and virtually none of them could have been considered "Olympic contenders" by any stretch of the imagination. But that's only a guess. I don't know what Monsky's actual skating accomplishments were, and whether she truly was an "Olympic contender" or not, or even if she ever competed at the senior national level. (She certainly did not ever win a medal of any color at the senior level at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, or ever compete in the World Figure Skating Championships, as I have access to that data.) I've tagged the article in the hopes that somebody can fact-check it and accurately describe what her accomplishments in skating really were. Dr.frog 06:20, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

• I've removed the claim that Monsky was an "Olympic contender". I recently acquired a large collection of old Skating magazines (the official publication of the United States Figure Skating Association). Monsky certainly did not compete at the 1965 United States Figure Skating Championships, nor can I find her name listed in any qualifying competitions for the 1966 season. There's a gap in my magazine collection for 1967, 1968, and 1969, but she did not compete at the 1970, 1971, or 1972 nationals either. What I did find is that Monsky passed her preliminary figure test at the FSC of Omaha in 1962 (reported in the November 1962 issue) and the first test in 1963 (reported June 1963). Again, I'm missing some issues in this period, but at that rate of progress it seems very unlikely that she would have made it to the senior/8th test by 1965. Assuming she somehow did so, though, it then becomes very unlikely that she ever competed against Dorothy Hamill, who didn't reach the senior level until the 1970-71 season. I do have a pretty complete set of issues from the early 70s and can find no evidence that Monsky was competing at all at that time. Anyway, I'm leaving open the possibility that Monsky qualified to skate at Nationals at some level in the years for which I do not have definitive documentation, but she pretty clearly did not have any particular notability as a skater. I suspect her actual accomplishments became garbled or exaggerated over the years by people who did not understand how competition in figure skating is structured. Dr.frog (talk) 23:45, 19 June 2010 (UTC)