Micheline Lannoy was born in Bruxelles, the daughter of Simone de Ridder, a figure skating coach. Her stepfather was Louis De Ridder, a multisport Winter Olympian who competed in ice hockey, speed skating, and bobsleigh. Lannoy began figure skating at an early age alongside her sister Francine at the Cercle des Patineurs de Bruxelles, winning junior championship titles in 1937 and 1938. She began competing as a pair with clubmate Pierre Baugniet in 1940; they later went on to dominate the Belgian pair skating scene in the post-war years, winning four straight national championship titles from 1944 to 1947. They also won the first international figure skating tournament after World War II, the 1947 European Championships at Davos and captured the World title weeks later. The following year, they won both the Olympic and World title, and became Belgium’s first Winter Olympic Champions before ending their career.
In the following years, Lannoy performed in skating shows in France and England before marrying a fellow Scottish figure skater, Jim Macaulay, in 1953. In that same year, she sadly suffered a personal tragedy when her mother Simone was killed in Germany after being thrown from a moving train. The couple immigrated to Canada in the mid-1950s with their two children, attracted by the potential of the Canadian figure skating scene. Settling in Kingston, Ontario, Lannoy and Macaulay became active in the Canadian figure skating circles as coaches, owing their services to several clubs across the country in several provinces, including in British Columbia, Ontario and Québec. She was still alive in December 2020, residing in the Niagara region of Ontario.
Belgium