Pat Pauley

Pat Pauley was taught to skate at the age of five by her Austrian–born mother and started skating competitively before her 10th birthday. In 1950 she won the under-9 All-England Ice Skating Championship in her home town of Kingston, Surrey. Having finished third and second respectively in the 1956 and 1957 British Ladies Figure Skating Championship, she won the first of two consecutive titles in 1958.

Between 1957-60 Pauley competed in one World and two European Championships, finishing seventh on all three occasions. That sequence was broken at the Squaw Valley Winter Olympics when she finished 15th. It was, however, touch-and-go as to whether she would compete at all, because just 48 hours before her event she was in hospital recovering from influenza.

One of Pauley’s proudest moments was in winning the coveted Richmond Trophy in 1954. She missed the competition through injury in 1955 and 1956 but returned in 1957 to finish runner-up to the defending champion, and future Olympic gold medallist, Sjoukje Dijkstra of the Netherlands.

Pauley turned professional shortly after the 1960 Olympics and skated with Holiday on Ice and appeared in some epic ice productions such as Snow White, Aladdin, Cinderella and, as Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz. Pauley’s hobbies were swimming and playing tennis. She was a language student and spoke fluent French and Germen.