Jill Marilynn Watson (born March 29, 1963 in
Bloomington, Indiana
Bloomington is a city in and the county seat of Monroe County, Indiana, Monroe County in the central region of the U.S. state of Indiana. It is the List of municipalities in Indiana, seventh-largest city in Indiana and the fourth-largest outside ...
) is an American retired
pair skater
Pair skating is a figure skating discipline defined by the International Skating Union (ISU) as "the skating of two persons in unison who perform their movements in such harmony with each other as to give the impression of genuine Pair Skating a ...
and coach. With her partner
Peter Oppegard
Peter Allen Oppegard (born August 23, 1959 in Knoxville, Tennessee) is an American retired pair skater and coach. With his partner Jill Watson, he is the 1988 Olympic bronze medalist and a three-time U.S. national champion.
In May 2022, Oppeg ...
, she is the
1988 Olympic bronze medalist and a three-time
U.S. national champion.
Watson was initially paired with
Burt Lancon
Burt Jude Lancon (born November 13, 1960 in Morgan City, Louisiana) was an American pair skater. Competing with partner Maria DiDomenico, he won the silver medal at the 1982 United States Figure Skating Championships. The following year, he teame ...
, with whom she won two national bronze medals in 1983 and 1984. She began competing with Oppegard in 1985. In their career, Watson and Oppegard won three national titles, a
world
In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...
bronze medal, an Olympic bronze medal, and various other medals. During Watson and Oppegard's free skate at the 1988 Olympics, a photographer dropped his camera bag onto the ice and an usher walked onto the ice to pick it up while the pair was performing an overhead lift on the other side of the rink.
She is now a coach at AZ Ice in the United States
She coached
Rena Inoue
is a Japanese-born American retired pair skater. With partner John Baldwin, she is the 2004 and 2006 U.S. National Champion. Inoue previously competed for Japan as both a single skater and pair skater. Inoue and Baldwin are the first skaters t ...
/
John Baldwin for five seasons.
Jill Watson and Peter Oppegard were inducted into the
U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame The United States Figure Skating Hall of Fame serves as a repository for the sport of figure skating. The United States Figure Skating Hall of Fame is where the greatest names in the history of the sport are honored. To be inducted into it is consi ...
in 2004.
Results
Pairs with Peter Oppegard
Pairs with Burt Lancon
References
External links
Watson and Lancon competition resultsWatson and Oppegard competition results
{{DEFAULTSORT:Watson, Jill
1963 births
Living people
American female pair skaters
American figure skating coaches
Figure skaters at the 1988 Winter Olympics
Olympic bronze medalists for the United States in figure skating
Olympic medalists in figure skating
World Figure Skating Championships medalists
Sportspeople from Bloomington, Indiana
Female sports coaches
Medalists at the 1988 Winter Olympics
21st-century American women