Dorothy Hamill Quotes
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I used to have terrible tantrums. I was temperamental when I was younger. Actually, what I needed was a swift kick in the pants. What a brat!
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In my teen years leading up to the Olympics, I loved having the excuse to skip out on parties because of skating. Partying wasn't my thing anyway. Mostly I hung out with other skaters. We were all buddies, so it's not like I missed out on socializing. I was really enjoying myself.
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In group lesson number six I think we learned how to turn backwards and then just kind of wiggle. That wasn't really skating backward, but I guess I was going in the right direction.
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My family had a membership to the Riverside Yacht Club where my brother, Sandy, learned to sail, and I competed in local swim races. My sister, Marcia, became a competitive springboard diver, and my brother excelled in water polo.
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I was a bratty little sister. I was the youngest of three, and I often felt as though I didn't fit in.
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People think skating would translate very easily to dancing, but it really doesn't. Dancing is a lot of fun and not as dangerous as being on the ice.
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I'm really very glad that I had skating to be my love and my escape. I think that it always gave me something that made me feel good, and it was music, and it was peaceful, and not a lot of the other stresses of life.
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My coach was a great politician, so he did most of the work. He was good.
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When I was growing up, there were very few women athletes. I remember watching Olga Corbett, but Peggy Fleming and Janet Lynn were my role models. I never dreamt that I could be at that level. I remember thinking they seemed so elegant and regal and powerful and feminine.
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My whole family, my father's side, there was a great deal of depression, and my mother's side as well.
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If you don't know a lot about figure skating, it's easy to fall in love with ice dancing because it's so romantic and so theatrical.
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It took me two years to get an appointment with Mr. Suga who cut my hair for the Olympics. Who knew? I had no idea that it would be popular.
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I always had the sense that nothing was never good enough - striving for perfection. My mother and I had a sort of typical mother-daughter relationship.
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My mother stopped working when she had my brother. She was a full time mom until I started getting heavily into ice skating lessons, and it got to the point where they really needed my mom to earn an income.
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I've made a commitment to concentrate on my career as an entertainer.
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Luckily, I discovered ice skating when I was eight and a half years old. There were two wonderful ponds within walking distance of my house. After all the physical activity the summer provided, I craved movement in the cold of winter. I had no skates, so Mom stuffed socks into my brother's old ones.
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I was just ice skating. I had no concept of that. In those days you couldn't see the judges. I was this little person on the ice and they were just people that would stand around the boards.
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One naively thinks that by winning the Olympics, it's going to be this switch, and then your life is going to be perfect, and that's not reality.
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Every time you go out on the ice, there are slight flaws. You can always think of something you should have done better. These are the things you must work on.
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I wouldn't say that there's ever been an Olympic champion that didn't deserve to win an Olympic Gold Medal.
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Everybody has to deal with tough times. A gold medal doesn't make you immune to that. A skater is used to falling down and getting up again.
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I was passionate. I found something that I loved. I could be all alone in a big old skating rink and nobody could get near me and I didn't have to talk to anybody because of my shyness. It was great. I was in my fantasy world.
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I never really liked my short hair; it never occurred to me that people would want it.
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My parents believed in exposing each of their children to an abundance of varied activities in the hope they would find something they loved. They each had found a passion - Dad with his music and Mom with her horses - so it was natural for them to encourage experimentation.