Kristi Yamaguchi

Kristi Yamaguchi
Kristi Yamaguchi as a model at the New York Fashion Week , 2009
Full name	Kristine Tsuya Yamaguchi
nation	United States
birthday	July 12, 1971
place of birth	Hayward, California
size	152 cm
Weight	42 kg
Career
Partner	Rudy Galindo
society	Edmonton Royal Glenora Club
Trainer	Christy Ness
status	resigned
End of career	1992
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 0 × 0 × World Cup medals 2 × 0 × 0 ×
winter Olympics gold Albertville 1992 Ladies  World figure skating championships gold Munich 1991 Ladies gold Oakland 1992 Ladies

Kristine Tsuya "Kristi" Yamaguchi (born July 12, 1971 in Hayward , California ) is a former American figure skater who started in single and pair skating . She is the Olympic champion of 1992 and the world champion of 1991 and 1992 .

Yamaguchi is the daughter of dentist Jim Yamaguchi and medical secretary Carole Doi. Her paternal grandparents and maternal great-grandparents immigrated to the United States from Japan . Yamaguchi's grandparents were sent to a detention center during World War II , where their mother was born. Yamaguchi grew up with her siblings Brett and Lori in Fremont , California. She began ice skating as a child as therapy for her club feet .

Kristi Yamaguchi originally started out as a pair skater with Rudy Galindo . They became American junior champions in 1986. But, unusually, she also competed in individual competitions in addition to her pair skating competitions. In 1988 she became Junior World Champion in both single and pair skating with Galindo. In 1989 and 1990 Yamaguchi and Galindo were also US senior champions . At the World Championships in 1989 and 1990 they were each fifth. In both years she had also competed in the individual run at the national championships and world championships. She was national runner-up behind Jill Trenary in both years and finished her first two world championships in sixth and fourth respectively .

After the end of the 1990 season, Yamaguchi decided to compete only in a single run. She moved to Edmonton to train with Christy Ness . This paid off. In 1991 she was again only US runner-up, this time behind Tonya Harding , but was world champion in Munich ahead of her compatriots Harding and Kerrigan . It was the first time in history that all women's medalists at World Championships came from the same country. Yamaguchi experienced total triumph a year later. For the first and only time she was US champion in Orlando and went to the Olympic Games in Albertville . Unlike her rivals Midori Itō and Tonya Harding, she didn't jump a triple axel , but instead focused on her triple-triple combination and trusted her artistry. Both Itō and Harding crashed in the freestyle at the triple Axel (Ito, however, successfully repeated him) and thus Yamaguchi won the gold medal despite an equally faulty freestyle. In her native Oakland , she then defended her world championship title and then ended her amateur career.

Yamaguchi appeared in ice revues such as Champions on Ice and Stars on Ice for over ten years . In 1998 she was inducted into the Figure Skating Hall of Fame . In 1996 she founded the Always Dream Foundation. The focus of the foundation is the promotion of the reading and writing skills of underprivileged children. At the Olympic Games in Albertville she met her future husband, the ice hockey player Bret Hedican . They married in 2000 and have two daughters.

Results

Single run

Competition / year 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 winter Olympics 1. World championships 6th 4th 1. 1. Junior World Championships 1. American championships 2. 2. 2. 1.

Yamaguchi's figure skates on display at the National Museum of American History

Pair skating

(with Rudy Galindo )

Competition / year	1985	1986	1987	1988	1989	1990
World championships					5.	5.
Junior World Championships		5.	3.	1.
American championships	5th J	1st J	5.	5.	1.	1.

• J = juniors

Works

• Kristi Yamaguchi, Christy Kjarsgaard-Ness, Jody Meacham: Figure Skating For Dummies . IDG Books, Foster City 1997, ISBN 0-7645-5084-5 .
• Kristi Yamaguchi: Always Dream . Taylor Trade Publishing, Dallas 1998, ISBN 0-87833-996-5 .
• Kristi Yamaguchi: Dream Big, Little Pig! Sourcebooks Inc., Naperville 2011, ISBN 978-1-4022-5275-4 .
• Kristi Yamaguchi: It's a Big World, Little Pig! Sourcebooks Inc., Naperville 2012, ISBN 978-1-4022-6646-1 .

Web links

• Kristi Yamaguchi in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Website of their Always Dream Foundation
• Kristi Yamaguchi in the Internet Movie Database (English)