Janet Lynn Nowicki (born April 6, 1953) is an American figure skater. She is the 1972 Olympic bronze medalist, a two-time world championships medalist, and a seven-time U.S. national champion. Amateur career Lynn began to skate almost as soon as she could walk, and took part in her first exhibition performance at the age of four at Chicago Stadium. By age seven, she was living away from home part of the year, staying with the slightly older skater Kathleen Kranich to be close to her coach Slavka Kohout, who worked out of Rockton, Illinois, but her close-knit family was never far away. Eventually her family moved from the Chicago suburb of Evergreen Park to Rockford, Illinois, some fifteen miles from Rockton and the rink. Janet attended Lincoln Junior High in Rockford. She used her middle name Lynn instead of Nowicki, which was constantly being misspelled and mispronounced. Janet was always forthright about the name change; in her own mind her name was still Nowicki. In 1964, at 11, she became the youngest skater to pass the rigorous eighth and final test administered by the United States Figure Skating Association, and two years later she won the U.S. Junior Ladies Championship at Berkeley, California. At that competition she landed a triple salchow jump, which at the time was rarely performed by female skaters. In later years she was also one of the first female skaters to include a triple toe loop in her programs. Moving up to the senior level, Lynn won bronze at the 1968 U.S. Championships, which qualified her to compete at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France, where she placed 9th. At the time she was 14 years old and it was her first major international competition. She also placed 9th at her first World Championships in 1968. Lynn won her first senior national title at the 1969 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. That year she beat Canada's Karen Magnussen for the North American Championship. She then finished 5th at the World Championships despite the absence of both Magnussen and Czechoslovakia's Hana Mašková due to injuries. She fell behind Julie Lynn Holmes, whom she had beaten for the national title, while Gabriele Seyfert of East Germany took the gold medal. At the 1970 World Championships, Seyfert and Austria's Trixi Schuba were again in 1st and 2nd place, while Holmes moved up to 3rd and Lynn finished in 6th.