Happy Skater Yuna Kim Appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador

Yuna Kim, 19 year old figure luminary, was recently appointed a UNICEF goodwill ambassador.

Kim, one of the most luscious Olympic Champion in history, in a short-run video message asked for continuous support for Haiti to recover from the devastating earthquake six months ago.

"We are excited that Yuna Kim is joining us as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and look forward to her inspiring support for children just as she inspired the world at the Olympics," said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake.

It tolls more than just the philanthropic knell of Yuna Kim, the Time honoree for the most influential people 100 in 2010, who had already donated about $100,000 for Haiti aid.

Although to some Yuna Kim was all about supreme reigning queen of figure skating world with opulent glow -- as of the most earning athlete at Vancouver Olympics -- the real story behind her success was quite an epic.

Kim's ascending was riddled with adversities.

Obstacles were treacherous. Inadequate facilities in her country where figure skating was virtually nonexistent in her budding years seriously handicapped her, and more importantly, recurring injuries in 2007 -2008 could have cut her career short while her family financially struggled to keep her on the ice.

What had empowered and driven Kim to the zenith through all these wasn't a youthful ambition.

Her unbent determination that enabled to push her ahead and overcome all the obstacles such as career-threatening injuries, was propelled by nothing grandiose or ambitious but an introspective quest to be a "happy skater".

The irony echoes, in retrospect, in sheer proportion, especially in the final battle with her archrival Mao Asada whose sole life objective had been focused on winning Olympic gold.

Kim's juggernaut poise and resilience in the face of extraordinary pressure that awed peers and fans all alike stems from her loyalty to the very motto she had adhered to from the beginning, and that's what made what Yuna Kim is today.

This willowy, happy skater seemed to have made others happy as well more than she was perhaps intended to.

By winning at Vancouver Olympics, Kim lavished priceless gift onto her nation with no precedent of wining any medal at all in the figure skating, and vindicated her coach who had twice folded the Olympic dream.

Never had so much exhortations been endowed by so many upon so young a figure skater. All available superlatives and enamored homage had been exploited and used up for Kim who revolutionized figure skating with unprecedented mastery.

Kim enshrined the sport with unabated gusto and anointed the fans with ineffable joy.

Currently nestled in Toronto, Canada, safe from her insanely fame in her home country, the figure queen was, however, just a girl who enjoys some anonymity in her adopted home, Brain Orser once said.

But it's still amazing to simply ponder what "just a girl" will bring forth in the years to come.