Motivation Quote by Brian Boitano

Boitano’s “Yeah, I am a little bit” is the sound of an athlete navigating a loaded question without feeding it. He opens with a half-step of concession, the kind that keeps you honest while refusing to become a headline. In elite figure skating, where every era is measured against the last, admitting you’re “a little bit” anything (prouder, better, faster, more technical) risks triggering the sport’s endless morality play: artistry versus difficulty, purity versus progress.

Then he pivots to the real message: depersonalization. It’s not about him; it’s “a natural progression of the sport.” That phrasing is doing quiet, strategic work. “Natural” frames change as inevitable rather than ideological, smoothing over the fact that technical revolutions are often pushed by judges’ incentives, scoring systems, and federations chasing broadcast-friendly escalation. By invoking “going upwards,” he borrows the language of evolution and improvement, a comforting story for fans anxious that the sport they loved has been replaced by an arms race.

The telling tell is “technical ability and everything like that.” It’s casual, almost shruggy, but it signals how technical dominance has become too sprawling to itemize: quads, combinations, transitions, stamina, risk management. Boitano, a skater from an earlier competitive era, isn’t romanticizing the past or dunking on the present. He’s offering a truce: progress is real, it’s systemic, and it doesn’t have to be a personal referendum on anyone’s greatness.