Author: Karen Bressler
Publication: Seventeen Magazine Vol: 51 Iss: 12 p:
84-87
Date: Dec 1992
Full Text: Copyright K-III Magazine Corp. 1992
At a posh hotel in Manhattan, Olympic Gold Medalist Kristi Yamaguchi is jumping up and down on a bed. She's been doing this for about forty-five minutes now, but she's not the least short of breath. Is this some newfangled training program for the world's best figure skater? Or is she simply letting off steam?
Neither: she's making most of her day as a model for Seventeen and proving that her lung power hasn't slipped a notch since the (Olympic) Games several months ago. Afterwards she says, "I never realized what hard work modeling is! It's a long day, and we skaters aren't used to looking straight into a camera."
This is a rare moment: Listening to the world's most celebrated skater tell you what she considers hard. Because the one thing you notice after spending a little time with this twenty-one-year-old is her absolute confidence, competence, and determination. If you remember last winter's Olympic Games in Albertville, France, you know what we mean. One of the games top thrill factors was watching Kristi skate virtually flawlessly while other top-notch competitors buckled under the pressure-cooker atmosphere. She floated through her routine, reeling off triple-jump combinations with about as much obvious exertion as most of us muster to hang up the phone.
That gold medal-winning performance may have looked so natural because practicing has been Kristi's life for then past fifteen years. She caught the skating fever when she was only six years old, after seeing an ice show and being dazzled by the bright costumes and music. "I kept asking my mom to take me every week, and I was competing by the time I was eight," Kristi says.
The sacrifices required along the way have been staggering, but Kristi seems totally unfazed. Or at least when it comes to talking with the press, she tends to be guarded - not the type to reveal much of a personal nature. Though she will admit, "I feel like I missed out on the regular high school social life, but that's the way I chose to be." Actually, Kristi - 'Yama' to her friends - opted out of the first two years of high school altogether: "I did independent study, and I knew it was good for my career. But I started to feel isolated and I thought it would be a good idea to be with kids my age." So that meant waking up before dawn, being chauffeured around by her number one fan (her mother), training till ten, then going to school. After school, she would take more rink time, have dinner but skip the ice-cream (her favorite food), and get to bed before prime time - "eight at the latest"- so she could begin the cycle again the next day.
"People think training is like the movie The Cutting Edge," she says, "where the guy went from playing hockey to skating in the Olympics in just a couple of years. I was like, Wait - it doesn't really work like that!" Yet Kristi insists she's never resented her unrelentingly tough regime: "Sometimes I wanted to let loose and not worry about training, but long-term I was aware of what was important to me in life and that's what kept me in line."
Since the end of high school, her daily life has even been more intense: She's been living and training in Edmonton, Canada - miles away from her family's home in Fremont, California (she even spent her last birthday on a airplane, heading home from a benefit performance). "It was hard to be apart from my family that first year," Kristi recalls. "I moved the day after high school graduation, so I missed the parties and that feeling of 'school's out.' I called home alot - my sister Lori [twenty-three] and my brother Brett [eighteen] and I are pretty close. One thing that made it alittle easier was that the skaters in Edmonton were really nice and we got to be normal friends outside the rink." There was also some romance for Kristi up in Canada; her ex-boyfriend was a skater there. She won't name names, though, since she's not the type to go public with the details of her private life. (but we do know she liked Kevin Costner and William Baldwin - "athletic types with a nice smile" win her over big time.)
Back to the tough life of being in training: It all paid off at the Olympics. "I felt well-prepared; actually, I was surprised that I wasn't more nervous," Kristi explains. Believe it or not, her most exciting moment at the Games wan't actually getting that gold medal around her neck, but getting all keyed up with teammate Nancy Kerrigan (the bronze medalist) as they headed to the award podium. "We were backstage saying, 'Oh my gosh, can you believe this is happening? This is THE Olympics!" Kristi says, obviously still alittle awed.
We found out one other thing that shook Kristi's usual composure: an invitation to have dinner at the White House with President Bush and the President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin last spring. "It was a formal affair - thrilling but very intimidating," she says, confiding that she's still on the shy side. "I had an escort from the Air Force; he was really nice and knew the right things to do, which was great because I had never been to a function with so many important people!"
Actually, Kristi's just being her modest self when she says that; she has met her share of hotshots - like actress Kathy Bates. "We had watched a movie Misery on one of our tours," she says, "and it was so scary. When we got to Los Angeles, we did our show and Kathy Bates was there. She came up to me afterward and said, ' I'm your number one fan' - you know, like in the movie. I was like 'Oooooh!' I didn't find out until later that my friends put her up to it."
Although she's already had a taste of worldwide fame, the five-foot-tall ninety-odd-pound athlete still tries to do "regular people" things. Like listening to Janet Jackson and Bryan Adams and "going shopping - anywhere," she says, laughing. When she's off the ice, her fashion sense is as far removed from those beaded skating costumes as can be: jeans, stretch pants, a button-down shirt or oversize sweater, and flats for her size-three feet. But when it comes to accessories, her taste is not so simple: "I'm really into jewelry," she says. "I love rubies - and diamonds, or course; they're a girl's best friend. My favorite piece is a heart-shaped ruby-and-diamond pendant my parents gave me right before the Olympics."
There's a chance that Dr. and Mrs. Yamaguchi may be buying their daughter another necklace next year: As of this writing, Kristi hasn't decided whether to go pro or shoot for another gold at the '94 Olympics, when the Winter Games schedule shifts. (Finishing college - she's taken a couple of psychology courses so far - and raising a family are longer-term goals.)
In the meantime, she's busy figuring out which endorsements to do. There was some speculation after the Albertville Games that all the offers were going to Nancy Kerrigan rather than the gold medalist because of the strong anti-Japanese sentiment in America at the time. But Kristi, the new spokesperson for the 'Celebrate! acetate' fashion campaign and DuraSoft Colors contact lenses and a natural diplomat, won't get into that discussion. "Nancy got a lot of offers, but I've been taking my time choosing what I"ll be most comfortable with," she says with assurance. "I definitely feel that I got my fair share." Spoken like a true winner, indeed.
Back to the Articles Page
Back to the Homepage