Kristi Yamaguchi

The second of three children, Kristi Yamaguchi was born July 12, 1971, in Hayward, California. She was a tiny, club-footed baby; to correct the inward turn of her feet, she was fitted with casts for the first nine months of her life. As a child, Kristi wore special shoes and took dance lessons as therapy. She saw an ice-skating show at a mall one day with her mother, Carol Yamaguchi, and was so entranced that she started taking skating lessons as soon as her mother would let her.

Kristi's grace on the ice developed with much hard work and great support from her family. She practiced her skating early in the mornings, worked hard in school in the afternoons, and went to bed very early. She also spent many hours with her mother driving to and from training and competitions. Meanwhile, Kristi's father, a dentist, was helping her younger brother Brett and older sister Lori pursue their own goals. The family also made financial sacrifices to pay for Kristi's training. Training a competitive figure skater is very expensive, but the Yamaguchis believed that it was worth it to help Kristi continue to skate.
The Road to Excellence

Incredibly disciplined and hardworking, Kristi pursued both single and pairs competition. She started working with singles coach Christy Kjarsgaard in 1981, and when she was eleven years old, she started training for pairs with Jim Hulick. Jim found Kristi a partner in Rudi Galido, who was a stronger and more advanced skater than Kristi. Kristi fought to keep up, and the extra effort paid off for her. In 1986, she and Rudi won a bronze medal in the pairs competition of her first Olympic Festival. At the 1987 World Junior Champion-ships in Brisbane, Australia, Kristi took first place both in her singles competition and in her doubles performance with Rudi.

In 1988, Kristi competed at the U.S. Championships, moving to the senior level in singles competition. She finished in tenth place and was on her way to national prominence. The stress of competing in two events, however, was tremendous; moreover, in the late summer of 1988, her trainer, Jim Hulick, was diagnosed with colon cancer. He needed to give up coaching for his health, but Jim continued to work with Kristi and Rudi, coaching their breathtaking side-by-side triple jumps, which they could perform again and again in routines.

At the U.S. Championships in February, 1989, Kristi qualified for both pairs and singles; she was the first woman to do this since Margaret Graham in 1954. In the pairs competition, with Jim Hulick watching his star students, Kristi and Rudi performed beautifully together. The crowd sat spellbound watching their triple jumps and artistry, set to "Prologue and Fanfare for the Prince" from Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, and Kristi and Rudi won first place. The next day, Kristi took second place in her singles competition, skating as a high-kicking cancan dancer to "Gaiete Parisienne."
The Emerging Champion

In March of 1989, Kristi debuted in Paris at her first World Championships. The world of figure skating was eagerly awaiting her performance, and Kristi took sixth place in the singles division and fifth place with Rudi in the pairs. After two more years of increasing her strength and speed, she would be capturing first place in world competitions. In the spring of 1989, her singles coach, Christy Kjarsgaard, married Andrew Ness, a doctor in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Kristi's hard work continued; she simply commuted to Edmonton to train.

The tremendous stress of competing in both pairs and singles, however, was wearing hard on Kristi, and in December of 1989, Jim Hulick died. Kristi and Rudi skated together only one more year. In 1990, they won first and fifth place in the U.S. and World Championships, respectively. Kristi's singles performances brought her second place in the U.S. Championships and fourth place in the subsequent World Championships. In 1991 and 1992, Kristi reached the top.
Continuing the Story

Skating in the U.S. Championships in 1991, Kristi came in second to a very strong performance by Tonya Harding. Determined to improve, Kristi studied videotape of her most recent competitive performances and saw what she needed to do. In the World Championships in Munich later that year, Kristi skated faster and more aggressively. She was not favored to win, but with a performance that included six triple jumps, she received a perfect artistic scoring from the judges and captured first place.

The triumph was exceeded only by her performance at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France. Again, she was not expected to win, but her performance won her a gold medal. She was quick, graceful, and completely in control during the short program. Although she fell during the long program, she skated beautifully, and the judges loved her artistic yet aggressive style.
Summary

After the 1992 Olympic Games, Kristi devoted herself completely to professional skating and continued performing with her beautiful combination of grace and speed. She is proof of the success hard work, determination, and a supportive family can bring. Her shy but fiercely determined good nature shines as an example to all in the intense world of figure skating.