Tara Lipinski

My Dream, My Turn


When it was all over, when she sat waiting, when the scores finally flashed across the monitors in the kiss and cry area in Nagano, Tara Lipinski didn�t even look at them. Instead, the fifteen-year-old wunderkind looked at the ordinals. Six first places. It was enough.

The Olympic gold medallist jumped up and shrieked for joy.

She had been the flavour of the moment the previous year. Fourteen years old, the youngest National champ in history, the youngest World champ in history, the youngest everything. Tiny Tara could do no wrong.

Then the new season began. The Olympic season, the one everyone had been waiting for... and suddenly, the girl who could do no wrong couldn�t do anything right.

Her costumes were wrong. Her choreography was childish. She cheated on the takeoff of her triple lutz. She wasn�t a real skater, a mature combination of artistry and technical skills - she was just a pixie, a jumping bean, a tinkerbell who could rotate through every triple in the book, but nothing more.

She came to Nagano as the underdog, but Tara wouldn�t give up her dream as easily as everyone expected her to. She�d wanted this since she was a baby and had made a podium for herself out of Tupperware bowls.

And so she went out onto the ice, and she got it. With speed, with joy, with everything she had in her little 4�10� body, she threw herself heart and soul into a program she loved and when she was finished, she raced across the ice and raised her hand in the air in triumph, screeching triumphantly.

When the ordinals came, and when at last, she didn�t have to wait any longer, she would shriek again. And jump again, off-ice this time. Her shrieks were heard throughout the White Ring and across the world through television sets.

Tara Lipinski�s dream had come true.


� 1998 by Y.T.S.. All rights reserved.

Photo courtesy of Slam Skating