Figure skating is not the only sport in which Miss Henie excels. She is a fine horseback rider, an expert swimmer, a superb dancer and one of her greatest achievements was being ranked in 1936 as the "Number Three" woman tennis player of Norway. One of her fondest hopes is that she may some day become Norway's first tennis player and represent her country in a second sport in international competition.

While most of Miss Henie's skating has been of a competitive nature, she became a finished exhibition star, as well. Long without a peer in the school figures (required numbers) and free figures (optional numbers) in the routine of the competitive figure skating, she became recognized as without a peer in the beautiful rhythmic figures of the exhibition program. Music, costumes and lighting enhance her striking appearance on the ice and the darling of the fjords is perhaps the most appealing, glamorous and entrancing sight among the world's great entertainers as she performs her miracles on the blades.

It took little Sonja three years to reach the top, but reach the top she did, in 1927. Then, at the age of fifteen - when most little girls are feeling the effects of their first love affair, or putting away their dolls for the last time - Sonja won her first world's skating championship.

For eleven successive years she won the world's figure skating championship. In 1928, 1932 and 1936, she carved her niche in the world's permanent athletic Hall of Fame by winning the Olympic Games figure skating championships without even serious competition.

Not only has there never been a great competitive ice skater, but also, there never has been one who sky-rocketed to fame at such an early age, or held the championships so many years.

Truly, little Sonja Henie deserves to be known as "The First Lady of the Ice."

While she is both an acrobat and an athlete, she is always the wistful wisp, the fragile, dainty sunbeam on the ice.

Early in 1936, Miss Henie was contacted in Europe shortly after her third triumph in the Olympic Games at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Bavarian Alps and was found to be, for the first time, in a receptive mood towards a professional contract. During her eleven years of triumphs as the First Lady of the Ice, she had resisted all professional offers. Miss Henie signed a contract and came to the United States for a coast-to-coast tour. Her first professional appearance in the United States had been at the Garden in 1928.

All records for ice carnivals were shattered last February [1938], when she appeared at the Chicago Stadium and drew 90,000 in five performances - an average of 18,000 a performance.

Now New York hungers for the little Norwegian nymph of the steel blades and her current attraction is sure to draw nearly 100,000 persons. New York, it seems, simply can not get enough of Sonja Henie, as is attested by theater box office records when her moving pictures are being shown.

Miss Henie's first tour was a phenomenal success. She had appeared in this country as an amateur twice before, but her first professional appearances drew even larger crowds than saw her as an amateur.

Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and practically ever town of any importance in between have paid homage to Sonja Henie by turning out by the thousands to be dazzled by her artistry on the ice.