Poulos, Leah
Speed skating
b. Oct. 5, 1951, Berwyn, IL
Poulos won speed skating's world sprint championship in 1974 and took a silver medal in the 1,000-meter race at the 1976 Olympics. In September of 1977, she married another U. S. Olympic speed skater, Peter Mueller, and retired from competition for two years to support him while he was in training.
Basically self-taught, Poulos once said, "I learned the basic principles by trial and error--falling down and getting up." She returned to skating in 1979, when she won her second world sprint championship, and she won two silver medals, in the 500- and 1,000-meter races, at the 1980 Olympics.