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Non-Fiction
AK from History: Kristi Yamaguchi: Figure Skater, Philanthropist, and Dream Maker
By Olivia Pineda, Assistant Editor
Figure skating is a beautiful sport, combining strength, grace, and agility to create breathtaking whirls and leaps across the ice. One of the most successful female figure skaters of all time is Kristi Yamaguchi, a Japanese-American woman who had a flourishing ten-year career. While today, she focuses more on her self-started foundation and her family, Kristi will always remain one of the most talented figure skaters ever.
Kristi Yamaguchi as a young girl
Kristi first started skating as a result of a medical condition called club feet, in which one’s feet are turned severely inwards, inhibiting one’s ability to walk or stand up. Skating was used to help as physical therapy to help her overcome her condition. However, this didn’t stop her from achieving success at an early age. “As a competitor, even as a young skater growing up, I always wanted to do as much or more than what my competitors were doing. I knew that was the only way for me to be competitive and possibly beat them,” Kristi says. Sure enough, it was this competitive nature that led her to her first victory, winning pairs figure skating at the age of 15 at the U.S. Championships in 1986. A mere two years later, she’d won the singles and pairs titles with her skating partner Rudy Galindo at the World Junior Pair Championships. For two years straight, she and Galindo won the senior U.S. Championships pairs title, in 1989 and 1990. Because both Kristi and Galindo were such good skaters individually, they each complemented each other when they got on the ice together, because they each could do much more complex moves compared to other pairs skaters.
At the age of 20 in 1991, Kristi moved to Edmonton, Alberta, in Canada, to focus on performing alone on the ice. She proved to be an equally triumphant single skater, winning the 1991 World Championships in Munich, Germany. The following year, Kristi went to her first and only Olympics, the 1992 Winter Olympics in France. To train, Kristi followed a slightly different regimen from her teammates (and opponents); Kristi focused more on her artistry and her triple-triple combinations (two jumps performed consecutively) to make herself a more well-rounded competitor. Sure enough, while she had a few errors in her different skating programs, she still managed to pull away the gold in singles, a huge feat and probably the highlight of her career.
Kristi is truly unique because despite her huge success over her ten-year figure skating career, Kristi is still humble, and has since started a foundation called the Always Dream Foundation, to help embrace the hopes and dreams of young children. Through her work, Kristi is telling us that we can all “always dream”.
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