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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. "

Dorothy Hamill

Family

Water

Sister

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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. "

" 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. "

" My whole family, my father's side, there was a great deal of depression, and my mother's side as well. "

" I've made a commitment to concentrate on my career as an entertainer. "

" I was always falling in and out of love. I was engaged when I was 16 to the first guy I ever dated, but my father told him I was too young. "

" 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. "

" My coach was a great politician, so he did most of the work. He was good. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I don't think television really captures the speed and the power of skating. "

" I didn't know about competition or the Olympics until Peggy Fleming won in 1968. My mother looked after all of the competition stuff. I just skated. I didn't really love competition, but that was the only way to get better. You'd see more talent. "

" A lot of people who have depression understand that the last thing in the world you want to do when you're feeling that way is get up and exercise. It's virtually impossible to do that. It's like somebody beating you. "

" My legs are ice skaters' legs. No tan in sight. "

" I wanted to learn how to skate backwards and they wouldn't help me and they went off and left me on my own. "

" Our family life, before figure skating turned it upside down, seemed normal. Our town of Riverside, Connecticut, was part of Greenwich, and we had the advantage of their wonderful community, with great beaches and beautiful parks. "

" 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. "

" I had the most incredible time on 'Dancing With the Stars.' It never occurred to me when I took it on that I would physically not be able to do it because that's not in an Olympic competitor's vocabulary! It was the most wonderful environment, such a nurturing environment. "

Dorothy Hamill

Environment

Dancing

" 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. "

" 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. "

Dorothy Hamill

Alone

Nobody

" I think Princess Diana probably had the most famous haircut, or Farrah Fawcett or Jennifer Aniston. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" You see the fairy tale - four minutes of glory at the Olympics. I thought my life would be cake after that. "

" I was really a spoiled brat when I was a kid skating. Meals are cooked for you, you are driven to the rink, they make costumes for you. Your parents sit around and watch admiringly while you skate. You don't have to think about anything but skating. You're just plain spoiled. "

" 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! "

" I'm certainly not a perfect mother, but I'm trying to be what my mother wasn't for me. My mother's battled depression, so I understand it now as a parent, some of the things that she must have been going through. "

" The mind is pretty powerful. In skating, you learn to click into that zone and focus not necessarily on what you're doing but if you're doing it well. "

" 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. "

" It's different today than it was then. In those days we were strictly amateurs. If I had wanted to stay in for the '80 Olympics, my parents couldn't have afforded it. "

" They're still considered Olympic eligibles, so there's never an issue whether they're going to turn pro or not. When they get to that level, money is never an issue. They make so much money now. "