In February, 1960, 20-year-old Nancy Ludington and her partner — already World bronze medalists and four-time American gold medalists — won Olympic bronze for pairs skating before an ebullient crowd at Squaw Valley’s Blyth Arena.

After subsequent years spent training others, the competitor-turned-coach retired in 1987 upon a move from Massachusetts to Maine. Living in Surry, she returned to coaching six years ago at the age of 65. Ludington — now Nancy Ludington Graham — carries a giant torch for skating that some say all but rivals the one seen at the 1960 Winter Games opening ceremonies.

“I love communicating with adults,” the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame member said of her current role, which includes coaching a segment of the population not readily associated with the sport. “They are great because they like to know how things work, why things happen.”

With double toe loops, layback spins and death spirals common in skating parlance and as performance objectives, the rigors of jumping and spinning are more often identified with the younger demographic Graham also coaches, though not entirely reserved for the same. But Graham also espouses recreational skating “at any level” for its many health and social benefits, which include increased balance and flexibility, bone strength and muscle tone, and a sense of camaraderie or belonging that may elude an aging population.

And then there is that overall feeling of freedom attainable on the ice that Graham and others equate to the sense of flying achieved in downhill skiing.

These elements resonate with many Maine adults.

Though the National Center for Health Statistics reports only 30 percent of adults ages 45 to 64 exercise regularly, and legions of tired, overweight and stress-ridden Americans jam pharmacy counters and emergency rooms, don’t tell that to the state’s fervent no-longer-in-their-20s skating community. In fact, many have replaced their fried chicken-and-(couch)-potato Sundays with arduous training for competition in local, regional and national events sponsored by skating clubs and even the U.S. Figure Skating Association.

 The Ice Woman Cometh

“At the U.S. Adult Nationals (technically the U.S. Adult Championships), the oldest competitor I saw was 81,” said Bangor’s Bridget Woodward of a 2007 trip to the competition, in which she hopes to participate herself in 2012 contingent on meeting preliminary testing goals.

Pond skating as a child in the Millinocket area, Woodward, 66, took up the sport again 17 years ago following a long absence where she focused on family and her job as a staff assistant to Maine U.S. Sen. Susan Collins. She returned to skating bent on competition in both freestyle and ice dancing.

Though modified in terms of the rigorous jumping and spinning requisites endured by younger skaters, to qualify for the U.S. Adult Championships Woodward must go before USFSA-sanctioned judges here in Maine and pass various tests. These include “bronze moves in the field” (already under her belt) and “bronze freestyle,” along with six dances: Dutch Waltz and Canasta Tango, already passed, and Rhythm ‘n Blues, Cha-cha, Swing and Fiesta Tango.

Working with coaches Tanya Quigley and Rob Yokabaskas, Woodward is on the ice six days a week, dividing her time among rinks in Bangor, Augusta, Readfield, Portland and Hallowell. She is determined to qualify for the U.S. Adult Championships in about a year, undeterred by the hard work, the travel or even the broken wrist she suffered this winter. With her doctor’s imprimatur, she kept on skating with the cast, which came off on March 17.

According to Woodward’s coach Tanya Quigley, 40, skating director for the Skating Club of Maine and a three-year Ice Capades veteran, when learning to skate it is generally recommended adults enter a structured class and learn skills at each level. As these levels progress and adult students are tested successfully, they may want to move up and acquire a private coach, with some eyeing competition.

“I’ve taught adults back in Massachusetts, my oldest being 86 years old,” Quigley recalled. “She was an ice dancer — didn’t want to jump and spin — and would wear a heart monitor, as she was doing this for her heart.” Quigley said her octogenarian student focused on edging maneuvers and passed some preliminary USFSA tests —  precursors to competition — which gave her something to work toward.

“Skating when you’re older is very scary,” Quigley acknowledged, adding she wants her students to set goals to push through any trepidation, not just get out on the ice. “If they don’t like it (competition), that’s OK, but I think to experience competing is really important,” she said,recognizing that each student has different needs, abilities and limitations.

“If I’m working with an adult who tells me he or she is having an off-day, I know their balance is not going to be good, so there are some maneuvers I’ll stay away from,” Quigley said.

Days of Ice and Roses

For Erica Rand, 52, a professor of gender studies at Bates College, immersion into competitive skating was not planned. It started with a move from Lewiston to Portland 10 years ago, where year-round rinks in Portland and Falmouth were readily available.

Because a new pair of good figure skates costs around $200 ($500 if your aim is to compete), Rand went to Play it Again Sports and spent $80 to get herself started.  “I had enough muscle memory to get me around the rink,” she said of her re-launch in Portland, recalling she’d skated a little growing up.

Not competitive by nature, Rand decided the courage to compete would come from her decision to write a book about it. She attended numerous competitions, including the U.S. Adult Championships, to acclimate herself under the guise of research, and in the process passed “bronze moves in the field” and “bronze freestyle” testing requirements. Like Woodward, she now plans to compete at the Championships in 2012. Meanwhile, her book, “Red Nails, Black Skates: Gender, Cash, and Pleasure On and Off the Ice,” is slated for a 2012 publication from Duke University Press.

For synchronized skating competitor Kathy Cain, 55, former skating director of Auburn’s Ingersoll Arena and an Auburn resident for 25 years before moving to Oxford recently, a childhood in rural Vermont facilitated skating on frozen lakes and rivers.

Despite no formal training, Cain joined the women’s ice hockey team in the 1970s at the University of Vermont. “It was just a club sport for women when I was there, before it became varsity,” she said. Upon her move to Maine in ’87, she finally entered a structured learn-to-skate program.

Her “synchro” team placed fifth out of 15 teams (teams are divided by age and skill levels) in February at the USFSA’s U.S. Eastern Synchronized Skating Sectional Championships at Lake Placid. Cain, who studied ice dancing and freestyle in preparation for the competition, passed accruing tests to qualify along the way. The former nurse practices at Family Ice Arena in Falmouth and Bates’ Underhill Arena in Lewiston, where her husband is a team physician, and volunteers as an instructor at Ingersoll.

Of Ice and Men

As technology and communications director for the state Senate Majority Office in Maine, Mark Ellis, 50, of Augusta, won a bronze medal at the U.S. Adult Championships five years ago for men’s freestyle skating. Former president of the Skating Club of Maine and now its secretary, Ellis is focused on entering the 2012 Championships to again compete in men’s freestyle and possibly a category called National Showcase: A Competition in Theatrical Skating, which is more interpretive than freestyle.

While preparing for his first nationals, Ellis broke his leg quite badly. “It was actually a double toe loop that I was working on, and I ended up with a double fracture – a spiral fracture of my tibia,” he recalled. With a steel rod and a lot of ibuprofen, something Ellis calls “an adult athlete’s best friend,” his plans for competition encompass the next quarter century. “I’ll compete as long as I’m able to walk.”

At 74 and still skating twice a week, Bill Fearnside of Southport started ice dancing and figure skating in his 40s. “My daughter Emily, a skater, and I got very involved in making props for ice shows,” he said of the years they lived in Rochester, N.Y., adding that one year he decided he had gone as far as he could in the art department. “I told myself maybe it would be easier just to learn to skate,” he quipped. Encouraging his wife, Elaine, to join him, Fearnside continued when she didn’t, and over time competed in five or six regional competitions.

In 1999, a “draw competition” held each Valentine’s Day to commemorate, in part, one of their club skaters who perished in the 1961 crash of the U.S. World Figure Skating Team, resulted in a delightful match for Fearnside.

“I drew the youngest girl of a family of four girls and one boy – about the most beautiful and best junior skater in the place,” he said of the requisite senior/junior pairing. “We went out on the ice and did a warm-up and somehow took a tumble.” He landed on his shoulder and couldn’t lift his arm. Undaunted, he convinced his young partner to hold up his arm during their routine, the duo going on to win the club’s silver medal that year.

Skating is a sport that can be done at any level, said bronze medalist Graham. “You may not want to jump or spin, but you can move on the ice, you can dance on the ice and have a wonderful time with it,” she said, noting that the musical and social aspects of skating add to the experience.

In fact, when her husband passed away four months after she retrieved her coaching mantle from the retirement bin, Graham said the intense concentration and dedication skating mandates were a kind of balm.

“It’s challenging and it makes you brave,” Bates professor Rand said of her own cerebral journey to the center of the ice. “And it’s sort of amazing to have the feeling of wind on your skin and through your hair.”