Kristi Yamaguchi's Long Goodbye to Ice Skating

Copyright 2001 Landmark Communications, Inc.

It's going on 10 years since figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi left the kiss-and-cry of competition for the meet-and-greet of ice shows and corporate schmoozing.

That's a full third of a life that Yamaguchi, 1992's Olympic gold medalist, says will change when the latest "Stars on Ice" tour ends next April.

It's her farewell tour, at least for now.

"After 10 years, I want to change my focus onto my family life and personal life more," says Yamaguchi, 30. "We'll see what happens."

Yamaguchi visited patients and staff at Norfolk's Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters on Tuesday morning on behalf of an Olympic sponsor. It was a rare day without skates for Yamaguchi, who has more or less trained constantly since she was 6 back home in Northern California.

It has paid off handsomely for the tiny woman who, dressed head-to-toe in black, appears almost frail. That, of course, belies the steeliness it took for Yamaguchi to win one national championship, two world titles and Olympic gold in Albertville, France, by the time she was 20.

Albertville was it, however, for Yamaguchi the competitor. Two gold medals would have been nice, but one is the holy grail. It etched Yamaguchi's place in history. And it secured a calm, lucrative future for her on the ice-show scene, as opposed to the pressure she would have endured to repeat her Olympic victory.

"In skating, very few people have gone back to defend," Yamaguchi says. "So much changes, so much goes on; there's no guarantee. I had put my time in. It was time to move on and do something different."

Ice-show skating is a different set of sequins. The challenge becomes not winning a medal, but winning over crowds again and again - 60 times, in four to five cities a week, from Christmas through April during the upcoming tour.

Now, much of figure skating's passionate audience would swoon if Yamaguchi did five minutes of toe loops and blew kisses. It takes more than that, though, to sell tickets for a decade.

It takes year-round training, for one, even as she splits time among Minnesota, San Francisco and Fort Lauderdale with her husband Bret Hedican, a defenseman with the NHL's Florida Panthers.

Taking off months at a time would erode her skills, Yamaguchi says. That's a real concern when the promoter expects seven solo, pairs and group performances from her every night.

"The challenge has always been an artistic challenge," says Yamaguchi, whose closest local "Stars on Ice" dates this tour are Dec. 29 in Landover, Md., and March 20 in Raleigh.

"You want to give the audience something interesting every year. It's a challenge to come up with the right music and choreography and put together a performance that will be memorable, hopefully.

"I work with different choreographers and take suggestions for music from everyone - family members, friends, fans, whomever. After 10 years it gets pretty hard to keep re-inventing the wheel."

Maybe that's some of what Michelle Kwan is going through. Kwan, 21, has won five national and four world championships. But in search of her first Olympic title, Kwan recently stunned the skating world by firing her longtime coach essentially on the eve of February's Salt Lake Olympics.

Yamaguchi, who says she'll be a goodwill ambassador at the Games, will watch the fallout with more than casual interest.

"No one really knows how their relationship was and how it was affecting her on the ice," Yamaguchi says. "It's really hard to judge from the outside whether this was the right move or not.