Peggy Fleming talks Olympics and breast cancer at Pink Ribbon Symposium in Jacksonville
When Olympic champion Peggy Fleming noticed a lump on her breast in 1998, she initially dismissed it as a pulled muscle.
But when it didn?t go away quickly, Fleming made a doctor?s appointment. The lump was so small that a cancer specialist couldn?t find it during an exam until she pointed it out, Fleming said during the keynote address Saturday at the fifth annual Pink Ribbon Symposium at the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront hotel.
When a biopsy found the small tumor was malignant, Fleming underwent a lumpectomy to remove the tumor and the surrounding tissue. The surgery was performed one day before the 30th anniversary of Fleming?s gold medal winning performance in figure skating at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France.
?I was devastated getting that diagnosis,? Fleming said. ?But I was very, very fortunate that I did catch my cancer early. I was very fortunate it did not travel into my lymph nodes.?
Today, 14 years cancer-free, Fleming, 64, said the lesson she took from her experience was ?pay attention and participate in your health. Know your personal risk factors.?
Fleming said she was ?a shy little girl,? 9 years old, when her father took her to a skating rink for the first time.
?It was magic to me,? she said. ?It was a feeling of confidence for me that here was something I did better than other people.?
The first competition she entered she won. The next competition she entered she finished ?dead last,? she said.
?I had the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat in my first month of competition,? she said. ?I liked winning more.?
Her first big victory came when she shocked the field by winning first place in the 1964 U.S. Championships when she was 15. The championships doubled as the Olympic trials, so her victory qualified her to skate in the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria. She finished sixth.
In 1966, at 17, she won her first world championship. Two weeks later, her father, only 41, died of a heart attack.
?I learned how to cry but I also learned not to crumble,? she said.
By 1968, Fleming was a two-time world champion and a prohibitive favorite in the 1968 Olympic competition. That created enormous pressure. As she prepared for her final routine, she felt ?sheer terror,? she said. ?And then my music started. I was kind of numb but that?s why you train so hard. You rely on muscle memory ? You learn to focus under extraordinary pressure.?
That experience helped when she received the diagnosis of breast cancer, she said. She likened her team of doctors and nurses to the coaches who spent a decade preparing her for her Olympic gold medal.
?You don?t win the Olympics by yourself and you don?t survive cancer by yourself,? she said.
Today, the mother of two grown sons and the grandmother of three boys, lives outside San Francisco with her husband of 42 years, Greg Jenkins, a retired dermatologist. Fleming has retired as color analyst for ABC Sports after 28 years. For seven years, she and her husband ran the Fleming Jenkins Vineyards & Winery, using grapes they grew on their property in foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. They donated $56,000 from the sale of their Victories Rose to breast cancer treatment and research. But they closed the winery in 2010.
Now, when she?s not traveling and speaking, Fleming said she has taken up painting.
?The surface of the ice used to be the place I could express myself,? she said. ?Now I have a canvas.?
The symposium included eight panel discussions on such topics as ?How Your Diagnosis Guides Treatment? and ?Hereditary Breast Cancer for Men and Women.?
?I?m getting some useful information,? said Evelyn Raymond, who lost a friend to cancer and came wearing a shirt that said ?My Friend?s Battle.?
?It?s been very informative,? said Michael Harrell, whose wife, Sharon Barnes, was diagnosed with breast cancer in February.
About 500 people attended all or part of the symposium, said Cynthia Anderson, a radiation oncologist who cofounded the symposium with Linda Sylvester, an oncologist.
After Fleming spoke Jeannie Blaylock of First Coast News talked about the 20th anniversary of Buddy Check 12, a program she started in which people encourage one another to do regular breast self-exams and get regular medical checkups.
When she asked Buddy Check Breast Cancer survivors to stand, one of the many people who did was Keith Bell, who came wearing a shirt that read ?I am a male breast cancer survivor.?
?This was very useful but we need a little bit more for the guys,? he said. ?Guys need to come out into the open on this.?
Charlie Patton: (904) 359-4413
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