Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 17, 1993 TAG: 9302170024
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
OLYMPIAN MIXES SEVERAL TALENTS IN ICE CAPADES
Cathy Turner is one of those people who sees the glass half full. The problem for the Olympic gold-medal winner is finding time to drink from it.A year ago, Turner became one of the United States stars at the Albertville Games, winning an individual gold and a relay silver as short-track speed skating was an Olympic medal event for the first time. While it was the zenith of a personal comeback, it hardly was the first time Turner has been on center stage.
Bringing a different dimension to the Ice Capades - which begin a five-day, seven-show run tonight at the Roanoke Civic Center - is only the latest vocation for Turner. Besides introducing short-track speed skating to the Capades, she also performs five songs, two that she wrote. The bold blade runner finds time to do some figure skating, too.
Turner, 30, was a U.S. and World Team short-track speed skating member in the 1970s, '80s and '90s. She left the ice for 8 1/2 years, returning in September 1988 with an Olympic dream. Now, she's pondering whether to bid for another Winter Games appearance a year from now in Lillehammer, Norway.
"I don't know what I'll do," Turner said. "In my heart, I feel like I've accomplished the biggest thing anyone can accomplish, especially considering that when I came back, I couldn't go two laps. Then, winning a couple of more gold medals isn't too bad a thought, either."
Between her speed-skating careers, the 5-foot-2 blonde was a pop singer with a show band in Las Vegas. She writes songs and jingles and has appeared in commercials. Some of the instrumentals you hear on "Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous" are hers. The "Born To Be Champions" promotion that airs on Home Box Office is hers.
Turner is on the verge of a record deal. She has been a champion water and snow skier, has competed in national cycling events, was an international taekwondo champion, has competed in bodybuilding, was a city diving champion in her native Rochester, N.Y., has found time - attending six colleges - to get a bachelor's degree in computer science; and, when she made a youth baseball team as an unabashed tomboy, it caused her brother to quit the team.
Martin Sheen's Symphony Pictures has bought the rights to Turner's life story for a made-for-TV production.
"The thing for me is to keep believing in something," Turner said. "It's all visualization and imagery. Whether it's skating or entertainment, it's the same theory. I want a record deal to happen, and I think it will. I'd like to sing and skate.
"When I stopped skating in 1980, my music career took off. When I visualize now, I see music. I see myself on stage, but it's still cloudy. I'm sorting things out right now. Whether I'm going to shoot for the Olympics again, I'll have to decide by April, because I'll have to get into some tough off-ice training."
Turner and speed skater Bonnie Blair were the only U.S. double-medalists at Albertville. Turner's Olympic bid - she won the 500 meters by four-hundredths of a second, half of a skate - was as much a struggle with herself as against the opposition.
Her career started going in counter-clockwise circles again after she looked at the newspaper one Saturday in September 1988, and saw a photo of a friend, a cyclist-speed skater in the Seoul Games. She told herself, "I am the exact same thing," and remembers her mother saying if that was what she wanted, Turner should try.
"That's the first time I really saw myself objectively," Turner said. "Mine is a long story of an identity crisis. It was really hard watching the Olympics in '84 and '88, when I wasn't skating and trying to go from sweats and sneakers to evening gowns and high heels on stage."
Turner said she was "the ultimate tomboy," and struggled with her early competitive years because of the urging of her father, whom she rarely sees now.
"I was competing and, to me, it was Cathy's father who was winning," she said. "Eventually, it got to the point where I had to win because of him. When I didn't win, he'd take it out on me. I became my father's identity and, eventually, it got to the point where I had to get away from that and into another relationship."
Turner said she has seen her father on few occasions over the past decade. One of those times was last year at Albertville. "He showed up wearing a shirt that had `Cathy's Dad' on the front," she said.
"Winning a gold medal is great," Turner said. "But what I've learned is that the ultimate is to be in love, have a good family and live your life to the fullest. It really doesn't matter if you have a gold medal. That's not going to matter as much as being happy."