Career
Fassi was born in Milan.
As a competitor, he won the European Championships in 1953 and 1954, and also won the bronze medal at the World Championships in 1953. He was the Italian men's champion for 10 years.
Fassi took up coaching after the end of his competitive career. From 1956 to 1961, he coached at the Olympic Stadium in Cortina, Italy, and for four years served as the trainer for the Italian World Team. One of his first students was a young German skater, Christa von Kuczkowski, who became his wife and mother to his three children: Riccardo, Monika, and Lorenzo.
Following the 1961 plane crash that killed the entire U.S. Figure Skating team and many of the top American coaches, Fassi moved with his family to the United States, where he soon became established as a top international coach. He was based first at the famous Broadmoor Arena in Colorado Springs, then for a time in Denver, Colorado before returning to the Broadmoor in the early 1980s, and finally, following a brief return to Italy, at the Ice Castle rink in Lake Arrowhead, California.
His students included World and Olympic Champions Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill, John Curry, Robin Cousins, and Jill Trenary. He also coached Scott Hamilton and Paul Wylie in the early stages of their careers. Skaters from all over the world came to train with Fassi, giving his training camp a strongly cosmopolitan and international atmosphere.
Besides being an excellent technical coach, Fassi had the reputation of being a master of political dealings in the figure skating world, with the ability to bring his students to the attention of the judges. He was such an icon in the sport that when the comic character Snoopy adopted an alter ego as a figure skating coach (appearing, for example, in the 1980 TV special She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown), it was clearly modelled upon Fassi.
Fassi died of a heart attack at the 1997 World Figure Skating Championships in Lausanne, which he was attending as the coach of US skater Nicole Bobek.
He was inducted into the Coaches Hall of Fame by the Professional Skaters Association in 2002.
Read more about this topic: Carlo Fassi
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)