In 1980, figure skater Robin Cousins was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY), beating athletes Sebastian Coe and Daley Thompson in the public vote, after winning the men’s singles at the European Figure Skating Championships on Gothenburg, Sweden in January and a gold medal in the same event at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York in February. Having accepted the SPOTY trophy from John Arlott, Cousins, clearly emotional, said, “I was just beginning to get over everything that happened in Lake Placid and what a thrill it is for me to come back and receive this trophy.”
Cousins had previously won a bronze medal at the World Figure Skating Championships in Ottawa, Canada in 1978 and silver medal in Vienna, Austria in 1979. He would go on to win another silver medal in Dortmund, West Germany in March 1980, by which point he was already Olympic champion.
Under the auspices of renowned Italian coach Carlos Fassi – whose other students included 1976 European, World and Olympic Champion John Curry – Cousins was considered one of the best, if not the best, free skaters in the world. As such he was among the favourites for the gold medal in Lake Placid, with his principal opposition coming from the last two World Champions, Vladimir Kovalyov of the Soviet Union and Charles Tickner of the United States, and Jan Hoffman of East Germany, who was World Champion in 1974 and would be again in 1980.
After placing only fifth in the compulsory figures, Kovalyov was withdrawn from the competition, supposedly due to illness, leaving Cousins and Hoffman as main rivals for the gold medal. Hoffman led after the compulsory figures and the short programme but, skating first of the six competitors in the free skating, Cousins received 5.9 from eight of the nine judges for artistic impression. He did not watch any of his rivals, opting instead to watch Linda Fratianne in the practice arena, but had done enough to win the gold medal, ahead of Hoffman and Tickner. Cousins subsequently confessed, “When I went for my medal I tripped because I didn’t feel my feet.”