'Kim Yuna's rival' Ando Miki opens up about painful love life, says most ex-partners cheated

Ando Miki, a former Japanese national figure skater, has opened up about a painful romantic history marked by repeated infidelity from past partners.

Ando appeared Tuesday on the Japanese TBS Radio program "Bavi and Oshinri Kenkyujo" and recalled spending her first season under an American coach around the age of 17 or 18. She said she remained in the United States during the transition from coach Carol Heiss Jenkins to coach Nikolai Morozov.

When the host asked about her love life during her time in the US, Ando said she had been in a long-distance relationship with an older ice hockey player back in Japan. She said the relationship lasted about three years.

"After about a year in the US, things started to change between us," she said. "We gradually grew apart and ultimately broke up. His possessiveness and obsession became too much to bear."

On her general approach to relationships, Ando said people might be surprised to learn she spends fairly long stretches on her own. "When I do date someone, I tend to be in it for the long haul," she added.

She then confessed that most of her past relationships ended because her partners had cheated on her.

"In most cases, I was the one who got dumped — or more precisely, they ended things after cheating on me," she said. "Because the industry is so small, word always seemed to find its way back to me."

Ando rose to prominence as one of Japan's leading figure skaters during the same era as South Korean "ice queen" Kim Yuna. She made history as the first woman to land a quadruple jump in an official international competition.

She represented Japan at the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics and the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, and claimed two world championship titles over the course of her career.

Her life off the ice, however, was far from smooth.

In April 2013, she shocked Japan by announcing that she had given birth to a daughter at age 25 while unmarried.

After the birth, she continued to balance child-rearing with competitive skating, finishing seventh at that year's All Japan Figure Skating Championships, before announcing her retirement the same year.

More recently, she drew controversy while working as a coach after allegations emerged that she had engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old student under her supervision.