82-Year-Old Roller Skating Champ Still Putting On Her Wheels

When 82-year-old Dottie Babcock of Wildomar laces up her roller skates and glides out onto the rink, she is grace on wheels.

The tiny silver-haired woman with striking blue eyes and Rockette legs doesn’t move like an old person. As she rolls out onto an outdoor rink at Arena Sports in Wildomar Thursday afternoon, wearing a short-short bright red and pink skater’s leotard, spectators gather to watch.

“Is she an ex-Olympian?” one man asks.

No, but she is a nationally ranked roller-skating champion who has been strapping wheels to her feet since she was 8 years old, and she has no plans to stop now.

During roller skating’s competitive season, Babcock drives herself to a Fountain Valley rink twice a week to practice her routines.

“There’s a good rink there,” she explained, noting that local competitions take place at the facility, including one she’ll be entered in this upcoming Mother’s Day, where skaters of all ages from California, Arizona and Nevada will show their stuff.

“I compete in the Golden Division, which is 65 and older,” Babcock said. “I am about the oldest.”

She competes in figure skating – a demanding discipline that requires precision and extreme concentration.

Earlier in her competitive skating career, which didn’t begin until around age 42, Babcock was a dancer on wheels.

“I had several different dance partners,” she said. “I don’t have a partner right now, but I would still do it if I could. I love it.”

Still a fierce competitor, Babcock has her sights on June’s USA Roller Sports regional competition in Fresno.

“I plan to be there,” she said, explaining that she’ll make the drive herself.

If she does well at the regional level, she will travel to the national competition in Lincoln, Neb., in July.

Elite competition is a familiar venue for Babcock: If she makes the cut this year, it will mark her seventh nationals competition.

From her neat-as-a-pin mobile home, Babcock talks skating and proudly offers to show her shelves of trophies, ribbons and medals that sit alongside a doll collection in a modest spare bedroom.

She brings out a scrapbook of old photos and skate programs that chronicle a life on wheels. While still strikingly beautiful today, Babcock is radiant in a circa 1949 black-and-white image where she poses in a form-fitting skating costume, her dark hair falling below her shoulders.

She pops in a DVD of her 2010 national performance, where she managed to place 19^th out of approximately 30 female competitors in her age division. (Men and women don’t compete against each other in figure skating at the regional and national level, Babcock said.)

As she watches, Babcock, who is gentle, charming and soft-spoken, critiques her performance.

“When I get nervous, I don’t stay up nice – my shoulders slump,” she said. “I am working on that.”

With four decades of competitive skating behind her, Babcock still gets performance anxiety, so she uses psychology to overcome the jitters.

“After I turned 80 I thought, ‘who the heck cares,’ and that has really helped,” she explained.

Born in February 1929, Babcock and her four siblings grew up in a small Pennsylvania town called Butler.

“It was out in the country,” she explained, noting that skating opportunities were nonexistent because all roads were dirt and there were no nearby rinks.

But at around 8 years old, she received her first pair of key skates and took to the roadways near her grandmother’s home some miles away.

The experience was life changing.

“I really started at my grandma’s,” Babcock said of skating. “There were paved roads. I was so happy. I skated on the highway – anywhere I could. There weren’t too many cars back then.”

Babcock eventually married, moved to Southern California, and gave birth to the couple’s only child, a daughter.

The family moved around the Southland, but eventually settled in Wildomar.

Babcock is now widowed, but her daughter, two grandchildren and a 6-month-old great-grandson are all nearby in Wildomar and Lake Elsinore.

Babysitting, gardening and skating keep Babcock in shape. Despite breaking her wrists four times while skating (the first time at age 50; the last at about age 77), she doesn’t suffer aches and pains.

“I don’t have anything wrong,” she said. “I take medicine for my blood pressure, but that’s it.”

She has had a warning though:

“My doctor said that if I break a wrist one more time, he’s taking my wheels away,” she said with a chuckle.

“The only thing that would stop me (from skating now) is the cost,” she said, explaining that gas prices and finding a nearby rink are ongoing challenges.

Arena Sports has worked on its outdoor rink for Babcock, but she needs an indoor facility with appropriate flooring.

As she skates Thursday at Arena Sports, Babcock admits she might end up being the oldest competitor at the USA Roller Sports regional competition this year.

It won’t be easy, she said. “The ‘young ones’ – that’s what I call the 65-year-olds – they’re pretty darn good.”