Ando Miki, once Kim Yu-na's fiercest rival, opens up about 13 years as a single mother

Ando Miki, 38, the Japanese figure skater who once shared the world stage with Kim Yu-na and Asada Mao, has broken her silence on the identity of her 13-year-old daughter's father.

According to Japanese outlets Oricon News and Abema Times, Ando appeared Tuesday on the Nippon TV variety program "The Night Ueda and Women Bark Deeply," where the episode's theme was single motherhood. She spoke candidly about raising her daughter alone and, for the first time, addressed details surrounding her daughter's father that she had long kept private.

In April 2013, Ando gave birth to her daughter, Ando Himawari, now 13, without marrying — a disclosure that sent shockwaves through both Japan and South Korea. She first showed her daughter to the public in a 2020 broadcast, where viewers praised the girl as the spitting image of her mother, but the father's identity had remained a mystery.

During the program, host Ueda Shinya asked Ando whether there was anything she was particularly mindful of in her relationship with her daughter.

Ando said the subject of the father was one that was bound to come up eventually. "Being a single mother, it's a topic that will inevitably arise at some point," she said. "I have never been through a divorce, and I raised her without a father from before she turned 1, so I think she has almost no memory of him."

"But I don't think it's something that needs to be hidden," she added.

Ando said she had been honest with her daughter about her father from an early age.

"I explained the reasons to her when she was little and showed her photos," she said. "If she wants to meet him, that's completely fine. He's probably still alive, so I've told her I would help her find him."

She also shared her view that parents should not unilaterally prevent a child from meeting a biological parent if the child wishes to do so. "There are households where the parents decide the child cannot meet the father even if the child wants to," Ando said. "I don't want to do that."

"Not registering the marriage was a matter between us adults," she added. "I think it's important to respect the child's choices."

"She might end up disliking me as her mother, but I don't feel that way," Ando said. "I think it's necessary to go along with what the child chooses."

Ando was one of the defining figures in women's figure skating from the late 2000s through the early 2010s. She retired in 2013 after a career in which she became the first woman to land a quadruple jump in competition and claimed two World Championship titles — in 2007 and 2011 — cementing her reputation as Kim Yu-na's most formidable rival.

“주식하다 망했다” 박정수 투자 실패…“삼전 8만원에 샀다 500만원 남겨”

https://biz.heraldcorp.com/article/10763606