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Kristi Yamaguchi

Summary
Kristine Tsuya Yamaguchi (born July 12, 1971) is an American former competitive figure skater and author. A former competitor in women's singles, Yamaguchi is the 1992 Olympic champion, a two-time World champion (1991 and 1992), and the 1992 U.S. champion. In 1992, she became the first Asian American to win a gold medal in a Winter Olympic competition. As a pairs skater with Rudy Galindo, she is the 1988 World Junior champion and a two-time national champion (1989 and 1990). After Yamaguchi retired from competition in 1992, she performed in shows and participated in the professional competition circuit. She won the World Professional Figure Skating Championships four times in her career (1992, 1994, 1996 and 1997). In 2005, Yamaguchi was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, and in 2008, she became the celebrity champion in the sixth season of Dancing with the Stars. Yamaguchi is an author and has published five books. Dream Big, Little Pig!, for which she received the Gelett Burgess Children's Book Award, appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list. Yamaguchi was born on July 12, 1971, in Hayward, California, to Jim Yamaguchi, a dentist, and Carole (née Doi), a medical secretary. Yamaguchi is Sansei (a third-generation descendant of Japanese emigrants). Her paternal grandparents and maternal great-grandparents emigrated to the United States from Japan, originating from Wakayama Prefecture and Saga Prefecture. Yamaguchi's grandparents were sent to an internment camp during World War II, where her mother was born. Her maternal grandfather, George A. Doi, was in the U.S. Army and fought in Germany and France during World War II during the time his family was interned at the Heart Mountain and Amache camps. Research done in 2010 by Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. for the PBS series Faces of America showed that Yamaguchi's heritage can be traced back to Wakayama and Saga prefectures in Japan and that her paternal grandfather, Tatsuichi Yamaguchi, emigrated to Hawaii in 1899.
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