Tenley Emma Albright (born July 18, 1935) is an American former figure skater and surgeon. She is the 1956 Olympic champion, the 1952 Olympic silver medalist, the 1953 and 1955 World Champion, the 1953 and 1955 North American champion, and the 1952–1956 U.S. national champion. Albright is also a graduate of Harvard Medical School. In 2015, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Figure skating career Albright was born in Newton, Massachusetts. Her father was a surgeon who wanted his daughter to be active in sports. Each winter, he would flood an area behind his house to create a skating rink for Albright and her friends. She was able to cut figure eights into the ice by the time she was nine years old. Just two years later, she entered and won the U.S. Eastern Junior Championship. That same year, she contracted polio. It turned out to be a mild case but it still left her muscles “weak and withered”. She started training at the Skating Club of Boston as part of her rehabilitation. Although rehabilitation is a chore for many, she found it “exhilarating”. She would later say, "Did you ever notice how many athletes my age once had polio? I think it's because being paralyzed makes you aware of your muscles and you never want to let them go unused again”. Albright won the silver medal at the 1952 Olympics. She won her first World title in 1953, silver in 1954, a second gold medal in 1955, and her fourth medal, silver, in 1956. In 1955 she recorded a triple— winning the US, North American and World Championships that year. She managed to do this while enrolled as a full-time pre-med student at Radcliffe College. She won the US National Junior Championship at the age of 14, and then won five consecutive national titles starting at age 16. In 1956, while training for the Olympics, Albright fell due to a rut in the ice and cut her right ankle joint to the bone with her left skate. The cut was stitched by her father, a surgeon. At the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, she became the first American female skater to win an Olympic gold medal. Albright retired from competitive skating after 1956 but remained attached to figure skating as a sports functionary. In 1982 she became a vice president of the U.S.