Happy Birthday to Rockford’s Own Janet Lynn

For those too young to remember Rockford's own Janet Lynn, who celebrates her 63rd birthday today, here's a quick rundown on her accomplishments as a figure skater:

She is an Olympic bronze medalist (Sapporo, Japan 1972), a two-time world championships medalist, and a five-time U.S. national champion.

She's also been called the best American skater who ever lived. Her legacy can't be overstated, according to a 2006 piece in the Chicago Tribune:

The shadow she casts in the skating world is so long that when Michelle Kwan and her high-jumping nemesis, Tara Lipinski, were facing off in the late 1990s, Lipinski's coach, Richard Callaghan, compared Lipinski to Janet Lynn.

Kwan's coach, Frank Carroll, in turn told The New York Times, "The greatest American skater I ever witnessed was Janet Lynn. She had everything, the looks, the music. She was poetry."

And she practiced that poetry in Rockton:

Training with a little-known coach at the now-defunct Wagon Wheel Ice Palace in Rockton, Lynn became a champion, winning the national junior ladies figure skating championship at age 12 with a difficult triple Salchow that had caused her to fall repeatedly in practice.

Experts including Dick Button had seen the falls and advised Lynn's coach, Slavka Kohout, to drop the jump from the young skater's routine, Kohout told the Tribune in 1966.

"They were watching Janet in practice. They didn't know how she could rise in competition. I've never seen anything like it," Kohout said.

Lynn went on to win five national championships, from 1969 to 1973, but her signature moment came at the Sapporo Olympics.

Rather than try to describe for you what happened at the Sapporo Olympics, let's let Jim Nance do it (in a piece that aired during the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan):

A few more shots of Janet Lynn: