ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 20, 1990                   TAG: 9006200419
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: C-5   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO                                LENGTH: Medium


RETIRED TEACHER GIVES SKATER LIFT

He's a young black figure skater with dreams of going to the Olympics.

She's a retired schoolteacher yearning to give minority youths a role model who can show that sometimes, dreams really do come true.

And if 71-year-old Elma Douglas has her way, skater Larry Holliday will one day be that role model.

They met by chance two months ago when Douglas accompanied her nephew to a local skating rink.

"I was so thrilled watching the things [Holliday] did that it brought tears to my eyes," she recalled Tuesday. "The only time I had seen skating like that is on television. . . . He was doing things that I now know are double salchows, flips, triple axles, going fast as the wind."

She approached the 25-year-old skater and said, "I want to be a support. You're doing such great things, I know you're Olympic material." But, she said, "he was embarrassed to tell me that he had no support."

Douglas used a chunk of her savings to buy an ad about Holliday's struggles in the June 11th edition of the Chicago Defender, a black newspaper. The ad generated calls and donations so far totaling more than $500.

Mayor Richard Daley last week donated $250, "and one guy said he had a vegetable garden and if we needed anything, call him up," Holliday said.

With the help of a community bank, Douglas has set up a trust fund for Holliday, who hopes the money will enable him to quit his job and train full time.

Holliday is the nation's 10th-ranked men's figure skater, according to the United States Figure Skating Association, and one of the few highly competitve black skaters.

For athletes at Holliday's level, the sport can cost as much as $35,000 a year.

He works an early morning newspaper route seven days a week, and has also spent evenings delivering pizzas, leaving daytime hours for skating. Twice a week he travels to Indianapolis to work with his coach and former champion, Pieter Kollen.

Holliday shares a tiny studio apartment with his mother, Norma, who devotes much of her secretary's salary to his skating expenses. Until he met Douglas, Holliday's only outside support was a $1,300 donation from the USFSA.

His goal is to place among the top three winners at the USFSA national championships in 1992, which would qualify him for the 1992 Winter Olympics.

"He has the potential to make those goals," Kollen said. "He has wonderful height on jumps, his body lines are very good . . . his spins are quite, quite nice."

For Holliday, who's been skating since age 11, the attention has been overwhelming.

"I'd like to say thanks so much, thank you five million times over," he said. "I'm very grateful, and I'll work hard to make sure their money isn't going to be wasted."

Keywords:
FIGURE SKATING



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