Debra Janine Thomas was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, and grew up in San Jose, California. She began skating at the age of five, and at the age of nine, she participated in her first competition, winning first place. It encouraged her to enter competitive skating and take formal lessons. She signed on with coach Alex McGowan, who trained until her retirement.
As a black girl in a white-dominated sport, Thomas often encountered discrimination, and judges favored the white contestants and gave better scores to her less-skilled competitors. That has not prevented her from skating, and at the age of 12, she won the silver medal at the national novice finals. Her career took off four years later when she was selected as the Los Angeles Figure Skating Club’s representative.
While most professional athletes do not attend college or take a gap year, Thomas continued her training and began her academic education as an engineering student at Stanford University. In her freshman year, 18 years old Thomas won the US national title, becoming the first black skater to hold a national title in ladies’ singles figure skating. This year, she also won first place at the World Championships. In recognition of her achievements, she received the ABC’s Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year award of 1986. Despite suffering an Achilles tendinitis in both of her ankles, Thomas reached second place in the 1987 US Nationals and reclaimed her champion title the following year.
At 21, Thomas competed in the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada, winning the bronze medal and making history as the first black athlete medalist at this competition. After the Olympics, she added another World Championship to her record before retiring from amateur skating to focus on her studies. She continued to skate as a performer for Stars on Ice and won the World Professional Championships three times.
In 1991, at 24, after receiving her bachelor’s degree, she retired from skating to further her education at Northwestern University Medical School. Afterward, she specialized in orthopedic surgery and completed her residency at Charles R. Drew University. After a one-year fellowship at Centinela Hospital’s Dorr Arthritis Institute in Inglewood, Thomas worked at Carle Clinic in Urbana, Illinois, and in 2010 she opened her own practice in Richlands, Virginia. In 2012, she had a psychiatric attack and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Then, her private practice failed, she got divorced, lost custody of her son, and declared bankruptcy. She had to close her practice and sell her Olympic medal to cover some of her debt.
In recent years she has been living with her partner in Virginia. In her short six years as a competitive figure skater, Thomas has changed the face of the sport by breaking stereotypes and promoting racial equality.
This post is also available in:
Español
This post is also available in:
Español
