Motivation Quote by Kristi Yamaguchi

Yamaguchi is naming the quiet contract that modern sports keeps rewriting: excellence is still required, but it’s no longer sufficient. When she says “not being judged solely on technical ability,” she’s pointing at a scoring culture - and a viewing culture - that rewards the feeling of inevitability, not just the correctness of the moves. In figure skating especially, the audience doesn’t merely want to witness difficulty; they want a story that makes the difficulty disappear.

The intent is pragmatic, almost protective. She’s giving athletes permission to think like performers without apologizing for it. That matters because “entertained” can sound like a dirty word in elite competition, as if artistry cheapens rigor. Yamaguchi flips it: entertainment is part of the job, and pretending otherwise is naivete. The subtext is also a warning. If you can land everything and still lose the room - or the judges - you’re vulnerable. Technical merit lives on a spreadsheet; charisma lives in the body language, the music choice, the timing of a glance that tells the crowd, I’ve got you.

Contextually, the line tracks with the broader 90s-to-now evolution of televised sport: more camera angles, tighter packaging, star-making narratives, and judging systems that claim objectivity while making space for “presentation.” It’s also a subtle comment on labor. Athletes are asked to train like engineers and sell like artists, carrying two standards at once - and being evaluated, increasingly, by how seamlessly they can fuse them.