In 1956, Heiss, then 16, traveled to the Winter Games in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, with her mother, Marie, who was dying of cancer. She finished second to U.S. teammate Tenley Albright, but two weeks later, at the world championships in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany, Heiss took the gold, getting the better of Albright for the first time following six runner-up finishes at nationals, worlds and Olympics.

"I was beginning to wonder if I was always going to be the bridesmaid and never the bride," says Heiss Jenkins, 58, who is married to 1956 Olympic figure skating champion Hayes Jenkins. "The combination of beating Tenley and the fact my mother was able to see it.... She was the one who had made everything possible."

Marie Heiss died that October, but Carol never faltered, winning the world championships the next three years, too. She then delivered one of the most polished performances in Olympic figure skating history, earning all nine first-place votes to take the gold medal in 1960. Following another world championship gold—her fifth straight—Heiss retired.

Six weeks later she married Jenkins. The couple moved to Akron, where they still live. Then, like three-time Olympic gold medalist Sonja Henie before her, Heiss Jenkins gave Hollywood a try. But after one movie—playing the female lead in 1961's Snow White and the Three Stooges, a $3.5 million production that she insists "was a wonderful experience"—she headed home to become a housewife, raising three children.

In 1978, when the owner of a new rink near Akron approached her, Heiss Jenkins returned to the sport, as a coach. Her most successful pupil is Tonia Kwiatkowski, who finished fourth at the recent U.S. Championships and barely missed a trip to Nagano.

How would Heiss Jenkins fare in today's skating world, where triple jumps are routine?

"I think if you ask any retired athlete that question, you'll always get the same answer: You do what you have to do to be on top. You'd work and do all the things necessary to do those jumps," says Heiss Jenkins, who was the first woman to land a double axel, in 1953. "Look, we're athletes. The competitiveness doesn't just disappear."

— by Albert Lin

photograph by John G. Zimmerman

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