Skater Faces Life Challenges

Figure skater Scott Hamilton has not had the easiest of lives but his new book Landing It: My Life on and off the Ice describes how he has faced multiple challenges.

And he shares with CBS This Morning Co-Anchor Thalia Assuras his message: "You must meet any challenge or competition head-on in order to succeed."

Adopted when he was 6 weeks old, he was in and out of hospitals, because of a mysterious illness that kept him from growing.

At age 8, he was diagnosed with Schwachmann's syndrome, a pancreatic enzyme deficiency that affects digestion.

Although doctors finally had a correct diagnosis, they did not know what to do and told his parents to just take him home and let him lead as normal a life as he could handle.

Hamilton took an interest in figure skating. His mother initially fought the idea because during his only other previous outing on ice, at age 4, Hamilton fell backward and cracked his skull open.

Skating was a struggle at first, but then he remembered to fall frontward instead of backward.

"My low center of gravity put me at an advantage over the bigger and stronger kids. I got a kick out of that, and it motivated me to continue skating," he says.

As he continued skating, his body seemed to be curing itself. The skating rink's cold, damp air helped his breathing, and the more he skated the more confident he became.

At this age he started to realize his philosophy of life.

"When you are faced with a challenge, you have two choices: You can meet it head-on, or you can try work around it. You must always go with the former; meet the challenge and no matter the outcome you are a winner," he says.

When Hamilton was 17, his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. The financial burden of his sport was beginning to take a toll on the Hamilton family. Right before the 1976 Junior National Competition, he was told he would have to stop skating competitively.

Hamilton had been performing decently but had never won a competition. He knew that if he was going to have to retire at a young age, he wanted to make some sort of mark.

He focused on a new harder routine. It paid off, and for the first time he won the Junior Nationals. A wealthy couple, Helen and Frank MacLean, stepped forward and decided to sponsor him.

"My mom was suffering the whole time, but she kept up full chemotherapy, [the] full course of classes that she was teaching and taking to get her next level of excellence so she could get a higher-paying job," he recalls.

"She never for a second gave up on me once," he adds.

His mother died when he was 18; and the emotional loss led him to refocus his party boy life. Soon he was at the top of the sport.

In 1984 he won the Olympic gold in Sarajevo and raised the level of athletiism within skating.

In 1997, however, Hamilton was diagnosed with testicular cancer and faced the biggest challenge of his life.

"Getting back on the ice was something that was necessary in my treatment, not just for, you know, doing what I have done in the past. But I had to get back to know that the cancer didn't ruin anything," he says.

On Sept. 7, Hamilton started a new fund, the Cancer Alliance for Research Education & Survivorship, at the Cleveland Clinic to increase education. "I think cancer is something you always think will happen to somebody else. Even though my mother went through the surgery, I really didn't understand what the treatment was," he says.

Commenting on his own health, Hamilton says he is doing great and is checked every four months. "It's a challenge. It's something that you have to treat with respect for your body but no respect for the cancer. You just got to say, 'It's not going to win,'" he adds.

To find out more information about the fund, email scottcares@cc.ccf.org.

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