It was just a time of a lot of fear in the country."
Begins skating
Yamaguchi fell in love with skating when she was four, watching American Dorothy Hamill win a gold medal in the 1976 Olympics. "She's part of the reason why I'm in the sport right now," Yamaguchi told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. "I had my Dorothy doll and I took it with me everywhere." Sixteen years after watching Hamill for the first time, Yamaguchi told the Mercury News: "I loved the music and the pink costumes and the way they [figure skaters] seemed to float around on the ice like little dolls. It's all I ever wanted to be."
At the age of six (1975), she took her first skating lesson at the Southland Mall in Hayward, California. From the start she took skating seriously. "When I look back on it, I worked incredibly hard for a little kid," Yamaguchi told the Mercury News. "I would not get off the ice until I did some particular move right or until I did something a certain number of times. From the time I was six, I kept bugging my mom, 'Let's go skating, let's go skating.'"
Yamaguchi went to lessons six days a week, starting at 5 a.m.
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