When one thinks of the debacle of 1993 Worlds...when so many people fell that Oksana Baiul ended up the champion almost by default. Kristi could have won easily there. But she was probably tired of the stress, and as luck would have it, her pro career began just as pro competitions hit their peak, so she was able to have an interesting, lucrative, and lengthy career as a competitive skater without going through the grind of Olympic-division skating for any more time. Kristi was actually one of the older Olympic champs at about 20 or 21 (not sure where her birthday came that year), so it wasn't as if she had just nipped in and out of competition like Hughes or Lipinski, to grab the OGM during a whirlwind year or two. She had been training hard, in two disciplines in fact, for almost two decades already. And in those days, the economic burden for her family must have been a consideration. It wasn't like the Kwan era, where skaters could earn quite a lot as eligible skaters.