Word: lipinsky
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Well, perhaps not that overwhelming. Kwan has competition, the keenest being fellow American Lipinski, the reigning world champion. This year Lipinski, like Kwan, has had to learn some harsh lessons. The first came at the competitive season opener in October; Kwan powered through a dramatic, elegant program set to Rachmaninoff, and this time there were no slips. Lipinski followed suit, delivering a clean short program. She couldn't hide her disappointment when the marks appeared. The technical scores, usually her highest, included a 5.5 out of a perfect 6.0. The pattern has continued in Lipinski's other competitions this season...
Still, she has not dominated competitions this year. She won one event but lost the nationals to Kwan and Trophy Lalique to the relatively unknown French skater Laetitia Hubert. Lipinski points out, however, that she had not won anything before her sweep at the end of last season. She tells TIME, "I feel so much less pressure now that I've made the Olympic team. The Olympics is going to be a little easier, because you've already made it, and you can just have fun with...
While she would have liked to arrive in Nagano as the U.S. ladies' champion, Lipinski is seasoned enough to put her loss behind her. "It was disappointing," she says of the dramatic fall that cost her the short program and forced her to battle back from fourth place to take the silver. "The biggest thing for me was that I made a mistake but I got up and did the rest of my program well instead of falling more and falling apart and not being able to hold it together. That felt good to me, that I could show everybody...
That fierce self-assessment, with its apparent reference to Kwan's spectacular fall last year, is magnified by Lipinski's appearance. There is a moment during every competition when the audience is reminded of just how young--and tiny--Lipinski really is. Just before it's her turn on the ice, as she waits for her name to be called, she skates around with the flower girls. She carves small circles around them, head down, eyes focused, concentrating on the program she is about to perform. At 4 ft. 10 in. and 80 lbs., with her hair pulled back...
...ladies' field can match Lipinski's reliability on those tricky triple jumps. A particularly difficult combination, the triple loop-triple loop, is now a trademark of hers. She has improved her speed and coverage of the ice considerably since last year by trying to match her training partner (and U.S. men's national champion) Todd Eldredge stroke for stroke around the rink. That is no easy task, since at 5 ft. 8 in. Eldredge stands a good foot taller. Now that she is an Olympian, Lipinski says, "I just want to have fun, enjoy the experience and do the best...