Retired American figure skater and Olympic Gold Medalist Scott Hamilton was presented with challenges very early in life. When Scott was two years old, he developed a mysterious illness that stopped his growth. Doctors ran tests and offered several wrong diagnoses, including cystic fibrosis. Scott eventually got better and later discovered the cause was a congenital brain tumor.
Scott was adopted at six weeks old by Dorothy and Ernest Hamilton and was raised in Bowling Green, Ohio. He started training with figure skater and Olympic medal winner Pierre Brunet when he was thirteen years old. Scott was almost forced to quit skating because of the high cost of training and being in college in 1976, but philanthropists Helen and Frank McLoraine stepped in and helped Scott cover the cost of training.
Finishing third in the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in 1980 won Scott a place on the Winter Olympic Team for that year. He finished fifth at those Olympics and had the honor of carrying the American flag in the opening ceremony. After a breakthrough performance at the 1981 U.S. championships, Scott never lost an amateur competition again. He won gold medals in 1981, 1982 and 1983 U.S. and World Championships before competing in the 1984 Winter Olympics, where he ended a 24-year gold medal drought for U.S. men’s figure skating.
After the 1984 Olympics, Scott went pro with his skating and spent two years touring with Ice Capades. He started “Scott Hamilton’s American Tour,” which was later renamed “Stars on Ice.” Scott co-founded, co-produced, and performed in “Stars on Ice” for fifteen years, retiring in 2001. He still occasionally makes guest appearances.
Scott’s early childhood bout with cancer was just the first of his encounters with the disease. He was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He overcame this round of cancer only to receive the diagnosis of a benign brain tumor in 2004. In 2010, Scott had brain surgery to prevent the recurrence of this tumor. He was diagnosed with a third tumor in 2016 but announced in 2017 that the tumor had been reduced by chemotherapy.
Despite his health issues, Scott has led an amazingly full and successful life, helping and inspiring others along the way. He is an internationally recognized TV personality and a New York Times Bestselling Author. His biography, “Landing It: My Life On and Off the Ice,” was published in 1999. He has published two Christian self-help books, “The Great Eight” in 2009 and “Finish First” in 2018. He also published a children’s book dealing with cancer in 2020, entitled “Fritzy Finds a Hat: A Gentle Tale to Help Talk with Children about Cancer.”
Scott spends his time running the Scott Hamilton CARES Foundation (Cancer Alliance for Research, Education, and Survivorship) that he founded after losing his mother to cancer and becoming a survivor himself. He has also established several educational and survivorship programs, including Chemocare.com and 4th Angel Mentoring.
One of Scott’s recent projects is Live Your Days: “a call to being present and not let day after day pass, just going through the checklist of life. It is about putting down your phone to enjoy the people and moments that God has given you because we don’t control the number of days we have on this earth, we only control what we do with them.” Live Your Days includes weekly podcasts and 30-day challenges, encouraging others to seek ways to live life to the fullest, a lesson Scott has plainly learned and taken to heart.
When not doing public speaking events, Scott likes to spend time with his wife, Tracie, and their four children at their home in Nashville, Tennessee.
-submitted by Warren County Public Library
