Flashback: The Secret General Hospital Winter Olympics Connection

When General Hospital’s Elizabeth Webber sent her son, Aiden, ice skating with Lucas Jones and his then-husband Brad Cooper, longtime Rebecca Herbst fans couldn’t help but wonder if it was an inside joke reference to Herbst’s own athletic past.

General Hospital Split Screen

Because from the age of 3, Herbst wasn’t just a child actress. She was also an aspiring competitive figure skater! She spent her summers training in Blue Jay, CA, with Olympic champion Robin Cousins and Frank Carroll, the same trainer who, at the time, was also working with a 9-year-old Michelle Kwan.

GH: Pick a Side

Unlike Kwan, Herbst only practiced two hours a day in order to also make time for commercial auditions. She went as far as trying to land triple revolution jumps but admitted later that she never landed a single one.

That’s why, at the age of 15, Herbst decided to drop skating in order to focus on her acting career full-time. The call was obviously a good one as, soon after, she landed a recurring role on the prime-time sitcom, Brotherly Love, followed by her role on GH.

General Hospital: Alternate Reality

Still, as the Winter Olympics unfold in Beijing, China, it’s fun to imagine an alternate timeline where another young actress plays Elizabeth Webber Baldwin, and Rebecca Herbst is competing on the world stage.

After she retired, Herbst explained that she preferred acting to skating for one key reason (and it wasn’t because acting involved less falling down). It was because, in acting, you could bring unique aspects of yourself to the role. And even though you do compete against others when you were auditioning, it wasn’t the same as competing in skating, where everyone had to do exactly the same thing and then were judged on who did it better.

Want more soap opera on ice? Check out the Figure Skating Mystery series of books!

General Hospital (GH) airs weekdays on ABC. Check your local listings for airtimes. For more about what’s coming up in Port Charles, check out all the latest that’s been posted on GH spoilers, and for an in-depth look at the show’s history, click here.