Sally-Anne Stapleford

Sally-Anne Stapleford was the daughter of Streatham´s Canadian-born ice hockey captain “Red” Stapleford. She followed her father onto the ice and took up skating at the Streatham rink at an early age. She started competitive skating at the age of 11 and received coaching from the legendary Gladys Hogg.

A trained beautician, Stapleford finished second to Jacqueline Harbord in the 1960 British Junior Championships and won the title the following year. In 1963 she finished third in the senior British Championships before going on to win the first of five consecutive titles between 1964-68 as she dominated British women´s figure skating in the 1960s. She went to five World Championships, although illness forced her to withdraw from two of them, and Stapleford competed at six European Championships, winning a silver medal at Moskva in 1965.

Stapleford retired from competitive skating shortly after her second Olympic appearance at Grenoble in 1968 after finishing 11th, just as she had done four years earlier at Innsbruck. Rather than turn professional, Stapleford became a skating referee, judge, and administrator.

In the 1970s Stapleford became a technical organiser for all ice skating events in Great Britain. She also became the first female president of the National Ice Skating Association of the United Kingdom, and in 1988 was the first British woman to be elected to the International Skating Union (ISU) and in 1992 was elected the Union´s ice figure skating chairman and in 2002 was the head of the ISU´s figure-skating technical committee.

Having been a competitor at two Olympics, Stapleford attended the 1980 and 1988 Games as a referee. In December 1998 it was announced that Sally-Anne Stapleford had been awarded the OBE in the New Year´s Honours list for her services to figure skating.

At the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olymics Stapleford was involved in a judging controversy. The Canadian duo were favourites for the pairs competition but it was the Russians who took first place and the French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne had told Stapleford that the head of the French Federation of Ice Sports, Didier Gailhaguet, had pressured her into giving marks in favour of the Russians as part of a judging deal with the Russian Federation to ensure that France won the ice dance title. The Internationak Skating Union (ISU) immediately suspended Le Gougne and later suspended her from figure skating judging for three years as they also jointly awarded the pairs gold medal to the Canadians and Russians.

Le Gougne had made allegations that Stapleford had tried to coerce her into signing a confession and denied any misdoings saying she had voted fairly. Stapleford felt her integrity was in doubt but felt completely vindicated after the Russian Alimzhan Tokhakhounov was arrested and charged with conspiring to fix skating competitions at the Salt Lake Winter Games

Because she had spoken out about the situation, Stapleford lost her position as chairman of the ISU figure skating technical committee.