Kristine "Kristi" Tsuya Yamaguchi
Figure Skater
Kristine Tsuya Yamaguchi was born in 1971 in Hayward, California. She is a Japanese American and is better known as Kristi. Despite her clubfeet, Kristi loved skating and competed in the pairs contest when she was in junior high school in 1986, when she and her partner Rudy Galindo won the US championships. In 1989 and 1990, they won the senior pairs US championships. Kristi then moved to Alberta, Canada so she could train to become a solo skater, and in 1991 she won the World Championship. Yamaguchi’s perseverance, hard work and competitiveness have allowed her to win a gold medal in Albertville, France in the 1992 Winter Olympics. Today, Kristi Yamaguchi is a wife, a mother, an author of two children’s books and the founder of Always Dream Foundation.
(Portrait by Tina Broussard, SFSU 2013)