{"id":159180,"date":"2026-02-01T14:54:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T14:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/159180\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T14:54:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T14:54:12","slug":"how-tai-babilonias-career-shattered-barriers-in-figure-skating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/159180\/","title":{"rendered":"How Tai Babilonia’s career shattered barriers in figure skating"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The seventh in an occasional series<\/a> of profiles on Southern California athletes who have flourished in their post-playing careers.<\/p>\n

Tai Babilonia\u2019s life changed forever when she was asked to hold a boy\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n

At first she resisted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to,\u201d she remembered. \u201cHe\u2019s a yucky boy.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Mabel Fairbanks<\/a>, Babilonia\u2019s skating coach, wouldn\u2019t take no for an answer, bribing the 8-year-old with stickers and a Barbie doll if she would just reach out and grab the hand of 10-year-old Randy Gardner.<\/p>\n

It would be another 40 years before she let go.<\/p>\n

By then Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner<\/a> had become one of the most decorated pairs in U.S. figure skating history, their individual names eventually melding into one.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy last name is \u2018and Randy,\u2019\u201d Babilonia said. \u201cAnd I embrace it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"U.S. <\/p>\n

U.S. pairs figure skating duo of Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner in 1979.<\/p>\n

(Tony Duffy \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

As a pair \u201cTai and Randy\u201d won five U.S. championships, medaled in three world championships and qualified for the Olympics twice, all before Babilonia\u2019s 21st birthday. Their success also pushed open doors that had long been closed since Babilonia, Black on her mother\u2019s side and part Filipino and Native American on her dad\u2019s side, was the first U.S. skater from any of those ethnic groups to compete in the Olympics or win a world title.<\/p>\n

Among those to follow her were Debi Thomas<\/a>, a two-time U.S. champion and a bronze medalist at the 1988 Winter Olympics, and Elizabeth Punsalan<\/a>, a two-time Olympian and five-time national champion in ice dancing.<\/p>\n

At about the same time Babilonia and Gardner were moving from competitive skating and the Olympics to the Ice Capades, another young girl was just starting to pursue her own Olympic dreams. Tiffany Chin would go on to win a national championship, two Skate America titles and just miss a medal in the 1984 Winter Games, retiring before she was old enough to legally drink.<\/p>\n

In that brief but brilliant career, Chin changed U.S. figure skating forever. She was the country\u2019s first Asian American national champion and first Chinese American Winter Olympian, paving the way for Olympic medalists Kristi Yamaguchi<\/a>, Nathan Chen<\/a>, Michelle Kwan<\/a> and siblings Alex and Maia Shibutani<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After retiring from skating, Babilonia, now 66, dabbled in coaching and sportswear design, became a motivational speaker, an activist and, most importantly, a grandmother. But the legacy Babilonia and Chin created will be on display in Italy this month when the U.S. fields one of the most eclectic Olympic figure skating teams ever, with 12 of the 16 athletes having immigrant parents.<\/p>\n

Five of the six singles skaters \u2014 Alysa Liu<\/a>, Isabeau Levito, Ilia Malinin, Maxim Naumov<\/a> and Andrew Torgashev \u2014 are first-generation Americans while the other, women\u2019s national champion Amber Glenn, identifies as pansexual. Pairs skaters Emily Chan, Spencer Howe and Ellie Kam and ice dancers Anthony Ponomarenko, Christina Carreira, Vadym Kolesnik and Emilea Zingas are also immigrants or first-generation Americans while Madison Chock<\/a>, the reigning Olympic champion in ice dancing, has Hawaiian, Chinese, German, English, Irish, French and Dutch ancestry.<\/p>\n

At a time when diversity, equity and inclusion programs are being dismantled, immigrants are being attacked and diversity is labeled a weakness, America\u2019s Olympic figure skaters have come to mirror the country at large.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s wonderful and so important,\u201d said Babilonia. \u201cEspecially now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nearly 60 years after Babilonia and Gardner skated together for the first time, the decision to pair them seems inspired, even providential.<\/p>\n

It was neither. Fairbanks, Babilonia learned later, simply needed a couple to skate in a club show at the Culver City Ice Arena.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just happened to be similar in height. And I guess we were cute,\u201d Babilonia said last month during a lengthy interview at the Colonial Revival-style mansion in the West Adams District that houses the LA84 Foundation.<\/p>\n

Gardner was already an excellent skater, as strong and athletic as he was outgoing and friendly; Babilonia was shy and far less steady on the ice. But that wasn\u2019t the only thing that made their pairing unusual.<\/p>\n

Gardner was white and Babilonia was Black. And in 1968, asking them to hold hands in public was scandalous, even in Culver City. However, Fairbanks, a legendary coach who had spent much of her life pushing back against convention, didn\u2019t see color. She focused only on talent.<\/p>\n

\"Randy <\/p>\n

Randy Gardner and Tai Babilonia roller skating together in May 1979.<\/p>\n

(Tony Duffy \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cMabel was the coach who taught all races, Hispanic, Black, mixed, Jewish,\u201d Babilonia said. \u201cMabel broke down that wall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fairbanks, who was Black and Seminole, was born in the Deep South at a time when ice rinks were segregated. Even after moving to New York, where she bought a pair of skates for $1 at a pawn shop, then taught herself how to use them, she skated mostly in nightclub shows, where she was limited to jumps and moves that wouldn\u2019t show up the white skaters.<\/p>\n

She soon moved to Los Angeles, touring internationally with the Ice Capades and Ice Follies, before becoming a coach and mentoring hundreds of young skaters, including Olympic medalists Scott Hamilton, Yamaguchi and Thomas.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it weren\u2019t for Mabel Fairbanks,<\/a> you wouldn\u2019t have any color in the predominantly white skating world,\u201d said Babilonia, who is shopping a biopic of Fairbanks, who died in 2001.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople don\u2019t really know her. She\u2019s like a hidden figure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet three years after Fairbanks made Tai and Randy a pair, they left her for John Nicks, who was coaching at the Paramount Iceland.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe took our skating to a whole different level. And it happened really quick,\u201d said Babilonia, who still calls her former coach Mr. Nicks. \u201cThat\u2019s when we started winning and improving and just really became a great pair of skaters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two years later Babilonia and Gardner won the U.S. junior nationals and three years after that they won the first of five national championships, qualifying for the 1976 Winter Olympics in Austria, where they finished fifth. Gardner wasn\u2019t old enough to vote and Babilonia didn\u2019t have a driver\u2019s license. But together they were holding their own against the best pairs skaters in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuch an incredible year,\u201d Babilonia said. \u201cWe won our first U.S. title, became Olympians, I got my learner\u2019s permit and had a crush on Peter Frampton.\u201d<\/p>\n

But they were just getting started. Gardner and Babilonia wouldn\u2019t lose in the U.S. championships for the rest of the decade. And 11 months before the next Olympics, they won their first world championship, then celebrated by skating for the queen of England at Wembley Stadium.<\/p>\n

\"Tai <\/p>\n

Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner compete at the World Figure Skating Championships in Tokyo in March 1977.<\/p>\n

(Tony Duffy \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

With the Winter Games coming back to the U.S. at Lake Placid, the Americans were favored to keep the Soviet Union off the top step of the medal platform for the first time since 1960, the last time the Olympics were held in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Only they never made it to the ice.<\/p>\n

Hicks had moved his skaters from Paramount to the Ice Capades Chalet, a buff-colored concrete-block building in Santa Monica, five blocks from the Pacific Ocean. During a training session there, Gardner inflamed a groin injury that had plagued him for months.<\/p>\n

It got worse when they got to Lake Placid and Gardner had a Xylocaine injection, but the anesthetic was too strong and it only made things worse; the pain was gone, but now Gardner couldn\u2019t feel his leg at all. They pulled out of the competition moments before it was supposed to begin.<\/p>\n

The next morning, with the skaters, their parents and their coach perched on the stage at a high school auditorium for a hastily arranged news conference, hundreds of reporters tried to get a shattered Babilonia to turn on her partner. She didn\u2019t take the bait.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe totally had my back,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cThere was so much camaraderie and trust and love between the two of us. She understood that it was a major injury and it was devastating. It changed the path of our career.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to say it ruined it,\u201d he added. \u201cIt just changed the path.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two months after leaving Lake Placid in sorrow, Gardner and Babilonia, who had gone from \u201cTai and Randy\u201d to the \u201cHeartbreak Kids,\u201d turned pro, signing a three-year contract with the Ice Capades that included endorsement deals.<\/p>\n

They never skated in the Olympics again. And while the money was good, the pace was punishing, with eight shows a week on a 30-week tour.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re performing every night, weekends two shows a day,\u201d Babilonia said. \u201cIf you don\u2019t pace yourself, which I didn\u2019t, it will rock your world in a negative way.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t do all the tricks you did as a teenager every night.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"American <\/p>\n

Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner skating in 1979, the same year they won the pairs world championship.<\/p>\n

(Tony Duffy \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Babilonia had never truly dealt with the emotional pain of the Olympic withdrawal. Now she was also dealing with the strain and fatigue of the ice show schedule as well as an identity crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cRandy figured out how to put Tai and Randy in a box and leave them there and go on with his life,\u201d Babilonia said. \u201cI didn\u2019t know how to separate them from me.\u201d<\/p>\n

So she sought answers in amphetamines, heavy drinking and a number of brief but high-profile romances before hitting rock bottom just before her 29th birthday, when she tried to kill herself with an overdose<\/a> of sleeping pills. Her recovery started seven months later with an emotional first-person account of her fall in People magazine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did it because I knew I had to,\u201d Babilonia, still fit and youthful, said of a confession in which she blamed no one but herself. \u201cI had to stop what I was doing and this was part of my recovery process. I couldn\u2019t say yes quick enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething inside of me said, \u2018This is your moment. Get it out. It may help some people,\u2019\u201d she continued. \u201cAnd it did.\u201d<\/p>\n

The magazine cover story was followed 19 months later by the prime-time NBC movie \u201cOn Thin Ice,\u201d<\/a> which went over much of the same territory, with Babilonia and Gardner playing themselves in many of the skating scenes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took me a while to watch the whole thing. Some scenes were hard,\u201d said Babilonia, who speaks in a confident, careful cadence. \u201cIt was just part of my recovery process.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s been sober 17 years and her relationship with Gardner, who came out as gay in 2006 \u2014 also in People magazine \u2014 has lasted longer than her marriage. Along the way, Babilonia matured from the shy withdrawn child who refused to hold a boy\u2019s hand into a bold, strong and confident woman.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s totally mature. She is worldly. And she\u2019s an advocate for equality in sports, people of color and all that,\u201d said Gardner, 68, whose home in Manhattan Beach is about 10 miles from the Culver City ice rink where he and Babilonia learned to skate once stood.<\/p>\n

The former teammates still meet at least once a month and talk on the phone frequently, although they haven\u2019t been on the ice together since Gardner underwent surgery on his back a year ago.<\/p>\n

\"Tai <\/p>\n

Tai Babilonia attends Project Angel Food\u2019s Angel Awards at Milk Studios Los Angeles in September 2024.<\/p>\n

(Phillip Faraone \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

When she stopped skating Babilonia tried coaching, but that didn\u2019t work because she didn\u2019t know how to teach the moves she had so easily mastered. Instead, she launched a clothing line, became a motivational speaker, volunteered with various groups promoting diversity on and off the ice, co-hosted a TV interview show taped in Santa Barbara and, for the last nine years, has co-hosted a holiday skate party for kids from the Union Rescue Mission. She also continues to skate in charity events.<\/p>\n

All that in addition to her work with Atoy Wilson, a former U.S. novice champion, on the Mabel Fairbanks biopic, tentatively titled \u201cBlack Ice: The Mabel Fairbanks Story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to try everything,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to experience everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

But her real job, she quickly adds, is being a grandmother to Ryett, her son\u2019s 2-year-old boy in Arizona.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love being a grandmother,\u201d she said. \u201cAbsolutely love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is also a prolific presence on social media, where most of her posts are either trenchant comments on the politics of today or black-and-white photos from back in the day, when she and Gardner \u2014 Tai and Randy \u2014 were winning medals and opening doors, helping to change U.S. figure skating forever.<\/p>\n

\u201cI appreciate what we did more as I get older,\u201d Babilonia said. \u201cWe were pretty good and we made our mark. We worked hard. We became two-time Olympians. We met the queen of England.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just wild.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The seventh in an occasional series of profiles on Southern California athletes who have flourished in their post-playing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[77504,5676,77510,77508,77509,48,52,51,50017,47,50,49,77507,3906,10012,20790,77505,77506,315,77503,72],"class_list":["post-159180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-babilonia","tag-career","tag-excellent-skater","tag-ice-capades","tag-ice-dancing","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-legendary-coach","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mabel-fairbanks","tag-month","tag-olympics","tag-pair","tag-randy-gardner","tag-tai-babilonia","tag-time","tag-u-s-championship","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}