This, of course, accounted for the saddest vignette of the Winter Olympics. Warming up at Lake Placid for his and Tai's showdown with the defending Olympic champions, Irina Rodnina and Aleksandr Zaitsev of the Soviet Union, Randy shockingly fell several times. A thigh muscle, torn in a workout 11 days before, had not totally healed, and it failed him when put to the test. After 10 years of training, the Americans' hopes for a gold medal had abruptly been crushed. "I felt nothing," says Gardner of that awful moment. "I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I didn't know whether to feel sorry for myself, Tai or all the people I let down. It was a nightmare."
Despite the emotional buffeting, the couple was determined to defend their world championship, and Gardner was back on the ice only nine days after the Olympics ended. Though neither knew whether Randy's ailing leg would let him compete, they were sustained by encouraging calls, letters and telegrams. "It's good to know," says Gardner, "that whatever the outcome, people are behind us."
For the moment, at least, the pair has scotched rumors that they will turn pro. "It's a possibility," says Tai, "but not for a long time." There is even talk—not encouraged by Babilonia and Gardner—that they might put off signing a professional ice-show contract in order to take another shot at an Olympic medal in 1984. "They could easily compete physically in another four years," says their coach, John Nicks. "But mentally, I don't know." Another factor might be whether Randy, Tai and their families would continue to subsidize their $40,000-a-year training and travel. Gardner is the son of an accountant for Hughes Aircraft in Los Angeles; Babilonia is the daughter of an L.A. police detective who has moonlighted in security jobs to help pay for Tai's career.
The couple met in 1970, when she was 9 and he was 11. They were skating individually in a local revue when someone suggested they compete as a team. Two years later Nicks, coach of three-year U.S. pairs champs Jo Jo Starbuck and Ken Shelley, took Tai and Randy into his stable. By 1976 they placed a surprising fifth in the Olympics at Innsbruck and in 1979 became the first American world pairs champs in 29 years when Rodnina and Zaitsev took a year off to have a baby.
Again in Dortmund, Rodnina and Zaitsev are the U.S. couple's main competition. Win or lose, Tai and Randy are looking forward to some hard-earned time off. While they have managed to indulge joint interests in Saturday Night Live, Laverne & Shirley, astrology and rollerskating, the pressure of competition has been nearly constant. "We'd like to wake up in the morning and do what we want to do," says Randy, "and not get the feeling we're being judged." Adds Tai, "We want to have fun and be kids." She plans to go to college to study commercial art and become "maybe a model or television newscaster," while Randy will finish up at the University of Southern California as a drama major.
As for romance, Babilonia and Gardner's relationship is purely athletic—they date, but not each other. "Still," says Tai, "after what we've been through, we feel closer than ever."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
