Gold medal-winning figure skater Scott Hamilton is so well known for his flamboyance and liveliness it's hard to believe he started out sickly and meek. At the age of just two, Hamilton mysteriously stopped growing, with no doctor able to offer a definite diagnosis. His family sought out numerous specialists, but eventually, through diet, exercise, and time, he began growing again. He remained slight, but this proved in some ways to be an asset as he began skating, adding to his agility.
Hamilton took to the ice early on and began training with former Olympic champion Pierre Brunet in 1976, when he was 13. By 1980, he finished third in the U.S. Figure Skating Championships and earned a spot on the Olympic team, eventually finishing fifth at the games in Lake Placid, NY. The next year, Hamilton took first place at the U.S. Championships, the first in a streak of first-place wins that would continue for every subsequent competition the skater competed in for the rest of his career. In the end, his achievements totaled four gold medals from the U.S. Championships, four from the World Championships, and one for the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo.
Fresh off his gold streak, Hamilton embarked on a professional career, where he found the freedom to express his creativity with a more performance-oriented take on the sport, entertaining crowds with fun music choices and costumes. He also became involved in major charity work, especially following a brush with testicular cancer in 1997 and treatment for a benign brain tumor in 2004. Additionally, Hamilton continued to work as a figure skating commentator on a number of networks and signed on to participate in the reality show Celebrity Apprentice 2 in 2008.
