On a February evening in 1976, at the Olympia-Stadion in Innsbruck, Austria, 19-year-old Dorothy Hamill took the ice for the biggest performance of her life. She earned an Olympic gold medal and captured the attention of figure skating fans all around the world.

Hamill's story, however, began far from the spotlight.

Born in Chicago in 1956 and raised in Riverside, Connecticut, she took her first glides on the ice on a pond behind her grandparents' house in Wellesley, Massachusetts, wearing a well-loved pair of hand-me-down skates.

After begging her mother for a pair of red-and-white skates that she saw in a department store, Hamill enrolled in weekly group lessons at the Playland rink in Rye, New York. She took her first private lessons from Barbara Taplin and entered her first competition at the age of 9. She soon began training at the Crystal Ice Palace in Norwalk, Connecticut, under the watchful eye of Otto Gold, a Czech-born coach who worked with 1948 Olympic champion Barbara Ann Scott.

Hamill's love for figure skating was evident, and her parents, recognizing her passion for the sport, made many sacrifices. Her mother drove her to every practice and sat in chilly rinks for hours on end. Her father, an executive at Pitney Bowes, never once let Dorothy know the extent to which skating impacted the family's finances.

By the age of 10, Hamill had mastered two double jumps. She began training with legendary coaches Gustave Lussi and Sonya (Klopfer) Dunfield and, in 1969, at the age of 12, competed in the U.S. Championships for the first time, winning the novice title. Moving up through the ranks in subsequent years, she finished fourth in her second nationals as a senior in 1972, earning a trip to the World Championships in Calgary, where she placed an impressive seventh.

By the mid-1970s, Hamill had Lutzed her way to the top of the American skating field. In 1974, she won her first of three U.S. senior women's titles and first of two back-to-back silver medals at the World Championships, with the help of esteemed pros Carlo and Christa Fassi. Carlo Fassi, a former European champion and the first skater from Italy to win a medal at the World Championships, had coached Peggy Fleming to Olympic gold in 1968. Fassi believed in balancing discipline with artistry, and under his tutelage, Hamill's skating blossomed.

The path upward was not without its bumps. At the 1975 U.S. Championships in Oakland, California, Hamill competed while in terrible pain, after suffering an injury the previous fall. She battled self-doubt and wrestled with the immense expectations that came with being tabbed as "America's next star."
Still, she persevered.

The mid-1970s were a unique time in women's figure skating. School (compulsory) figures still counted for 40% of a skater's overall score, but the introduction of the short program gave strong free skaters a more equal opportunity to succeed. Though women were increasingly attempting triple jumps, they weren't yet the norm. A polished, well-rounded program featuring an array of double jumps was often rewarded more than a daring program with flawed triple jump attempts. The world's top skaters also had to be experts at figures, and nerves sometimes got the better of Hamill when she was patiently carving out brackets and loops.

Hamill's rivals were fierce. 1974 World champion Christine Errath of East Germany, the product of a state-backed system designed to churn out winners, had a triple jump in her arsenal. Dianne de Leeuw, a graceful Californian representing the Netherlands, won the World Championships in 1975 after decisively beating Hamill in the figures and short program. Both had the technical skills and résumés to seriously challenge Hamill at the Olympics in 1976.

But Hamill possessed something harder to quantify: presence and poise. Her skating had a flow and a natural connection to the music. Her programs never looked rushed, and her jumps were never telegraphed. Instead, they were accents to her choreography. It was these qualities that made her stand out in a crowded field.

 Hamill arrived in Europe for the 1976 Olympic Winter Games with a world of expectations on her shoulders. Her picture was plastered on the front cover of Time magazine, with a feature story hailing her as "America's Premiere Artist on Ice." The media's hype put the "press" in pressure.

The competition began with the figures. Hamill, wearing thick glasses and a lucky gold four-leaf clover, demonstrated precision and skill, finishing just behind West German skater Isabel de Navarre. De Leeuw finished third; Christine Errath fifth. Hamill's strong showing in the figures was exactly the cushion she needed heading into the short and free programs.

Hamill glided her way to the top of the standings with a precise and elegant short program to Rubenstein's Konzertstück in A flat major, but on the day of the free skate, Hamill's mother was so nervous she couldn't bring herself to come to the rink to watch. Instead, she nervously paced and chain-smoked in her hotel room.
Pretty in pink, Hamill took her place at center ice for her free skate performance.

She looked serene, as though she had found a quiet confidence at the exact right moment. Her music, a stirring medley that included selections from old Errol Flynn films, blared over the speakers at the Olympia-Stadion. It was immediately clear that Hamill was in her element. Her program was a master class, peppered with exquisite double jumps and elegant spins with beautiful, classic positions — including her signature "Hamill camel." Her footwork sequences showcased her musical interpretation. Nothing was phoned in. Every movement blended into the next. Hamill was a "skater's skater" — a performer whose skating could most be appreciated by someone who knew firsthand how difficult it was to make it look so easy.

In Hamill's autobiography Dorothy Hamill On and Off the Ice, she recalled, "I had never felt as good as I did at that moment. I felt I possessed endless strength, and I knew instinctively that I was not going to fall. I was skating better than I had ever skated in my life. Finally, it had all come together. ... I had reached the other side of the rainbow."

When Hamill finished her program, the audience erupted into applause. The judges confirmed what the audience already knew with their unanimous first-place marks: Dorothy Hamill was an Olympic gold medalist. Afterward, the U.S. Figure Skating Association threw her a party and Dick Button gave her a bottle of champagne.

Carlo Fassi encouraged Hamill to retire before the 1976 World Championships in Göteborg, Sweden. Refusing to take the easy road and determined to win a World title to complement her Olympic gold medal, Hamill pushed on. It was the right decision — she won the competition by a landslide, earning a standing ovation.

In the months that followed, Hamill's life transformed. People stopped her on the street to tell her how proud they were of her. She received letters and telegrams from all around the world. Barbra Streisand even called in the middle of the night to congratulate her and recommend her manager. Hamill never let the attention go to her head. She once told a reporter, "I always take the time to talk to people. I remember as a child asking a skater for an autograph and being told to get lost. I promised myself I would never be like that."

Having achieved all of her goals, Hamill decided to turn professional. She signed a contract with the Ice Capades and made appearances on "Good Morning America" and Johnny Carson's talk show. Long before the Tickle Me Elmo craze, Americans flocked to department stores in droves to buy Dorothy Hamill dolls, which came with their own "skating rink."

And then there was the haircut. Her flattering wedge-shaped bob, designed by Japanese-born stylist Yusuke Suga, became a nationwide trend. Not since the 1960s, when women across the country tried to emulate Jacqueline Kennedy's bouffant, had a hairstyle become such a fad. Beauty salons were flooded with requests for the "Hamill wedge" and soon, Hamill began appearing in commercials for Clairol's Short & Sassy Shampoo. It was rare to see an American athlete influence pop culture to such a degree.

It must be said that Hamill became a much better skater as a professional than she ever was as an amateur. Her skating matured like a fine wine, thanks in part to her work with the John Curry Skating Company. She appeared in TV specials with Gene Kelly, Andy Williams, Perry Como, and Donny and Marie Osmond, and she performed in made-for-TV skating adaptations of "Romeo and Juliet" and "The Nutcracker." Her performance in "Romeo and Juliet on Ice" earned her a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in the Performing Arts in 1984.

Olympic champion Robin Cousins starred in "The Nutcracker: A Fantasy on Ice" with Hamill. He recalled, "The fabulous Dorothy was a great sparring partner on the Nutcracker filming and I'm laughing even now thinking of it. ... As someone who was in the arena in Innsbruck, it was a young competitor's dream to witness some truly groundbreaking performances across all disciplines. Dorothy was joyous whenever she was on the ice. Off the ice, she is one of the nicest and funniest people I've known. She took everything that women's skating was before and made it her own. As a result, she helped pave the way for what it's become."

Hamill won the World Professional Figure Skating Championships in Landover, Maryland, five times in the 1980s. The final time she won, in 1987, she performed a stunning program choreographed by Sandra Bezic, to a piece from the brand-new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical The Phantom of the Opera. It was perhaps the first time a great champion of the sport ever skated to a piece we hear so often today — "The Music of the Night."

For her contributions to the sport, Hamill was inducted into the World and U.S. Figure Skating Halls of Fame. Fifty years later, the memory of her golden moment still lives on. In the grand scheme of figure skating history, her win represents the very best of a time when a beautiful layback spin, spiral and delayed Axel meant much more than an extra rotation on a jump or achieving a "level" on a spin. She was the last woman in history to win an Olympic gold medal without rotating in the air three times.

In an interview with the Academy of Achievement, Hamill recalled, "I think the reason I won the Olympics was sheer perseverance. Not because I was ... more talented than anybody else. I worked as hard as I could. I was always the first one on the ice and the last one off."

Thanks to her discipline and immense talent, Hamill won Olympic gold in 1976 — but it was her presence and extraordinary charm that made her a household name and a figure skating legend.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Award-winning author Ryan Stevens is a respected authority on figure skating history. For more than a decade, his popular blog, Skate Guard, has attracted thousands of readers worldwide. Ryan has contributed to SKATING magazine, and his expertise has been sought by museums and broadcasters, including CBC, NBC and ITV. He is the author of Jackson Haines: The Skating King and Barbara Ann Scott: Queen of the Ice. Ryan lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. You can follow his blog, Skate Guard, on Facebook: @SkateGuard and Instagram: @SkateGuardBlog.