Tara Lipinski

Tara Lipinski
Full name	Tara Kristen Lipinski
nation	United States
birthday	10th June 1982 (age 38)
place of birth	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
size	147 cm
Weight	36 kg
Career
society	Detroit Skating Club
Trainer	Richard Callaghan
choreographer	Sandra Bezic
status	resigned
End of career	1998
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 0 × 0 × World Cup medals 1 × 0 × 0 ×
winter Olympics gold Nagano 1998 Ladies  World figure skating championships gold Lausanne 1997 Ladies

Tara Kristen Lipinski (born June 10, 1982 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania ) is a former American figure skater who started in a single run . She is the Olympic champion of 1998 and the world champion of 1997 .

Career

Lipinski is the only child of Jack Richard Lipinski, a lawyer and manager of an oil refinery, and Patricia Brozyniak, a secretary. She began roller skating at the age of three and figure skating at the age of six. The family lived in New Jersey until 1991 , then they moved to Sugar Land , Texas for professional reasons of their father , but there were no training opportunities there. So Lipinski moved with her mother to Delaware , where she had previously trained.

In 1995 Lipinski took part in their first Junior World Championship and finished fourth. In 1996 she could not improve there and took fifth place. Then she changed her coach Jeff Di Gregorio, with whom she had trained in Delaware, and went to Detroit to Richard Callaghan . For the first time she started at the national senior championships . She benefited from Nicole Bobek's cancellation and finished third behind Michelle Kwan and Tonia Kwiatkowski . This qualified them for their first World Cup , which took place in Edmonton , Canada . She finished them in 15th place. This year the International Skating Union decided to raise the minimum age for participation in international competitions to 15 years. Athletes who had participated in a competition at a younger age were still allowed to participate. So 13-year-old Lipinski was able to take part in the next competitions.

In 1997 Lipinski was surprisingly US champion in Nashville and world champion in Lausanne , both times ahead of Michelle Kwan. At the age of 14 she was both the youngest US female champion and the youngest world champion in history. At a smaller tournament she was the first woman to show a triple Rittberger triple Rittberger combination. Lipinski also won the Grand Prix final that year and defended that title a year later.

Gold at the 1998 Winter Olympics

At the 1998 national championships , Lipinski fell in her short program on the triple flip, while Michelle Kwan went without a mistake. So Lipinski went to the Olympic Games in Nagano in second place . Both were considered favorites, Michelle Kwan even more after her performance at the national championships. Both Lipinski and Kwan showed strong performances there. Lipinski was just behind Kwan after the short program, but was the last to show a technically somewhat more demanding freestyle. Like Kwan, she did seven triple jumps, but including a triple Rittberger-triple-Rittberger combination and a triple toe loop-half- Rittberger- triple- Salchow combination. So Lipinski became the youngest figure skating Olympic champion in history.

Because of a serious infection, Lipinski had to cancel the world championship and ended her competitive career. She took advantage of her great popularity and appeared in numerous ice revues such as " Champions on Ice " and "Stars on Ice" as well as in television programs and promotional activities. In 1999 she also became world champion among professionals. In 2000 she underwent hip surgery. Dissatisfied and disappointed with the ice revue, she concentrated on acting from 2002. She had guest appearances on A Heavenly Family , Malcolm In The Middle , Kidding, and Still Standing . She is also involved in numerous foundations, such as B. for children with leukemia and against drug use .

She has been married to TV producer Todd Kapostasy since June 2017 .

Results

Competition / season	1993/1994	1994/1995	1995/1996	1996/1997	1997/1998
winter Olympics					1.
World championships			15th	1.
Grand Prix Final				1.	1.
Junior World Championships		4th	5.
American championships	2nd N.	2nd J	3.	1.	2.

• N = novices, J = juniors

Publications

• Emily Costello, Tara Lipinski: Triumph on Ice . Bantam Books, New York 1997, ISBN 0-553-09775-X .
• Tara Lipinski, Mark Zeigler: Totally Tara - An Olympic Journey . Universe, 1998, ISBN 0-7893-0142-3 .

Web links

Commons : Tara Lipinski  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Tara Lipinski in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Lipinski official website (English)
• Tara Lipinski at the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Tara Lipinski Bio (June 9, 2017)