The Long Program: Skating Toward Life's Victories

A truly great book--I could hear Peggy's voice in her words as I read each page! Peggy not only goes through her personal history but the last chapters are devoted to her cancer struggles, and her advice on fitness/health. She wants to help us all get through our own "long programs" in the healthiest ways possible. Peggy is very candid and open in her narrative and keeps your interest, even if you don't know much about the sport. Buy this book!

Positive and upbeat, this delightful biography could only come from somebody like Peggy Fleming, a skating icon and national treasure. Her writing is honest, candid, and refreshingly unpretentious. What I like about this book is that it is written in Peggy's voice--you feel as if she is actually talking to you. Even if you're not a skating fan, you'll enjoy this book enormously.

I read this book on a bitterly cold rainy weekend. It was perfect to brighten the dismal mood. Can we think of anyone who has conducted her post-athletic career in as classy a way. With her youth and beauty, whe could have "cashed in" and, like so may who gain celebrity, become overexposed and turned her fame into something vulgar. Read this and you will transported to a more innocent time.

THE LONG PROGRAM was a book I truly enjoyed, from beginning to end. I've always been a Fleming fan, and it was with great interest that I bought the book and began reading about Peggy's humble beginnings, her family's moving around, becoming an athlete, and growing into an Olympic champion. I feel that she was very honest in this book, sharing with the reader the good with the bad, and I felt it was refreshing that she gave her opinion on things like other the performances of other skaters, the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan incident, the changes in skating, etc. For such a private person to share her real struggle with breast cancer and also to include details of her personal life that others may have chosen to gloss over -- these things make for an exceptional autobiography, which I feel this is. She is a real person, and tells it like it is here in her own uplifting way. I recommend this book highly.

Peggy Fleming is a true champion, in every sense of the word. After reading her book, I was inspired by her dedication to her sport and even more so later to her battle against breast cancer. It was also great to get a real behind the scenes look at her life, including some surprising things like the fact that her mother MADE her costume for the Olympics, and Peggy recently became a Grandma! Great reading.