A former Winter Olympics star faced financial difficulty in retirement (Image: Gilbert Iundt; Jean-Yves Ruszniewski/TempSport/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)
Former figure skater Debi Thomas made history at the Winter Olympics but struggled after retiring from the sport. She became the first black athlete to earn a medal at the Winter Olympics, winning bronze at the Calgary Games in 1988.
Her bid for a gold medal was amplified by Thomas’ rivalry with East German athlete and eventual champion Katarina Witt. The 58-year-old had already proven herself on one of the sport’s biggest stages by winning the World Figure Skating Championship two years earlier. The two-time US national champion also claimed silver and bronze medals at subsequent world championships. Away from the ice, Thomas trained to be a surgeon but later faced financial hardship and was forced to sell her Olympic medal.
Medical career
Thomas began studying engineering during the height of her skating career, pausing for the Winter Olympics before resuming the following year, eventually graduating in 1991. The Olympian later graduated from medical school in 1997.
On the task of jugling her degrees with a skating career, Thomas told My LITV: “I think my success was that I was too stupid to know what was impossible. So I really would just set my mind and just say ‘I’m going to go to college and win a world championship at the same time.”
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The Winter Olympics icon became an orthopaedic surgeon in 2005 and opened her private practice five years later. However, she would later file for bankruptcy and in 2015, it was reported that Thomas was struggling financially following her failed business and two divorces.
Thomas became a doctor after her figure skating career (Image: Glenn Koenig/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Selling Olympic medal
In a 2018 interview with the New York Post, Thomas admitted to parting with her 1988 bronze medal to help make ends meet. She said: “I lost it to bankruptcy. They can take away the medal, but they can’t take away the fact that I won it.”
Three years earlier, Thomas had spoken about living in what was described as ‘a bug-infested trailer’. However, the Team USA star insisted she was happy with her life, despite still having money worries.
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“It may look [to] people on the outside like it’s insane, but I don’t care,” Thomas told The New York Post. “I don’t care about living in a trailer. People are so obsessed with material things, but I only care about knowledge.”
Thomas returned to figure skating competition in 2024 (Image: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Return to skating
Thomas dusted off her skates for the 2024 World Figure and Fancy Skating Championships in New York. Before starting her training, the Olympic icon had not skated for 12 years but placed second in an eight-woman field.
“Coming back and doing this really is probably one of the hardest things, probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life and I’ve done a lot of hard things,” she told NBC Sports.
Reflecting on her eventful life in April 2024, Thomas told My LITV: “I could tell you a lot of things. My life is very complex and the world isn’t necessarily ready to hear everything that I have to say.” However, when asked if she was in a good place, she replied: “Oh, yeah.”