Kat and I were in our 20s when we won in '88. Our personalities were already established. We were ready to move on to a life of professional skating.
Brian Boitano
That's what amateur skating is about, technical expertise, and it should always stay that way.
The Olympics are great for notoriety right off the bat, but your body of work is what people remember you for.
The U.S. Olympic spirit award is an award that is given to an athlete who embodies the Olympic spirit in more ways than just on the playing field, in showing incredible perseverance, in overcoming obstacles, and what we wanted to do is have everybody can vote on-line.
Sasha gets a raw deal from the press. She makes one mistake in her program and people rip her for not pulling it off when it counts. But she never falls apart. She never just completely folds and misses everything. Usually it's just one mistake.
I have to consider my greatest accomplishments winning the Olympics because everything that I've done after that is really because of the Olympics.
Plus the public's attention span is so short right now, if a skater doesn't strike while the iron is hot... well it's not like people will forget you, but they just won't care anymore.
So the programs all start to all look the same. I watched one free skating competition, and I thought I was watching a short program. Everyone was doing exactly the same elements.
Yeah, I am a little bit, and I think it is a natural progression of the sport, of going upwards in technical ability and everything like that.
