Word: lipinsky
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Only in the worlds of figure skating and Nabokov does the age of 17 seem old. But Michelle Kwan, all of 17 and already once an ousted champion, embodies fallibility and, yes, maturity as she crosses blades with her toughest competitor, Tara Lipinski, 15 (rid of her final baby molar only last year when she won the U.S. Figure Skating Championships). Hordes of sponsors and adoring young fans are choosing sides. Even bookstores are battlegrounds, with Lipinski's Triumph on Ice taking on Kwan's Heart of a Champion. A real showdown, though, took place last week...
...though she carefully avoids the dread R word. Rivalry, after all, doesn't have a pretty past in women's skating, thanks to the thuggery of 1994. (This year, the biggest worry is autograph seekers; top competitors are escorted to the practice rink by security guards.) When asked about Lipinski, Kwan told TIME, "We respect each other, and I don't like to focus on any one name when I compete. She's just like any other competitor." Perhaps, but she was the competitor who mattered...
...Lipinski rocketed through figure skating's triple crown--the Nationals, Champion Series and World Championships--and made time to chat up Letterman and model DKNY Kids clothing on her Website. Chevrolet, Minute Maid and Campbell's soup are only a few of her endorsements, and her agent, Michael Burg, says, "Wherever we go, we see Kwan's people too." It all seems so cutthroat for a girl whose hometown is called Sugar Land, Texas...
...Lipinski skates with a sort of fairy confidence in easy landings. And until last week, her biggest gremlin was her triple Lutz, dubbed the "triple flutz" because she cheats slightly on the takeoff by leaning heavily on the inside of her blade. Then she stumbled on the triple flip in the short program, drawing marks as low as 5.2 for technical merit. She dropped to fourth place and later insisted in a teary voice that the fall was "not a doubting thing or a technical problem, just a fluke." The flub was shoved into the past by her solid long...
...Tara Lipinski In 1996 the pixie from Sugar Land, Texas, finished 15th in the World Figure Skating competition. This year, at 14, she was first, and for an encore won the nationals with a credulity-defying triple-loop triple-loop combination. Now she's off to the Olympics, again to battle grizzled champ Michelle Kwan. Michelle...