Gliding For Some Gold Tara Lipinski And Michelle Kwan Are Skating’s Olympic Favorites

Tara Lipinski sports a necklace with a tiny, golden skate charm. Michelle Kwan wears gold, too, a Chinese good luck charm from her grandmother.

Enough of the substitutes. These two want to hang the real thing around their necks - a gold medal.

“The Olympics are everybody’s dream,” said Kwan, the 1996 world and U.S. figure skating champion. “Everyone wants it.”

Their quest for gold gets going in earnest this week at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Philadelphia. With Kwan and Lipinski, the reigning world and U.S. champion, the gold-medal favorites, it’s shaping up as a preview of next month’s Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

Sure, there are other skaters with a shot at gold - Russia’s Maria Butryskaya and Tanja Szewczenko of Germany - but they’re going to have to go through Kwan and Lipinski to get it.

“Definitely, Michelle and Tara have kind of the edge as far as reputation is concerned. They both are world champions, they’ve both beaten each other off and on over the years,” said Frank Carroll, Kwan’s coach. “I’m very proud we have two such great skaters coming from the United States.”

While they’re no Nancy and Tonya - don’t look for any clubbing incidents at these U.S. championships - the Michelle-Tara rivalry has its own drama. After Kwan established herself as the skater to beat by sweeping the U.S., world and Champions Series titles in 1996, Lipinski came along last year and knocked her right off the top podium.

She beat Kwan not once, not twice, but three times, becoming the youngest U.S. and world champ along the way. Kwan’s poor showing might have helped Lipinski win the U.S. crown, but the 15-year-old with monster jumps won the world and Champions Series titles on her own.

Kwan seemed to have the edge this year, easily beating Lipinski at Skate America in October. She was skating with the exquisite artistry and elegance that hypnotized everyone in 1996, while Lipinski was taking flak for everything from her triple lutz to her costume choices. She lost again at Trophy Lalique, finishing second to Laetitia Hubert of France.

“I’m a little puzzled and I don’t fully understand it,” Lipinski said. “But this year, I am confident in my skating.”

But Kwan ran into problems of her own. After tumbling to the ice at the end of her free skate at Skate Canada, Kwan discovered she’d aggravated an old stress fracture in the second toe of her left foot.

She was off the ice for three weeks, her longest break ever. She resumed light workouts Dec. 1, but had to pull out of the Champions Series final, delaying a rematch with Lipinski until nationals.

“My confidence level is in the middle, and I’m trying to get it motivated to move up,” Kwan said before Christmas. “Hopefully, I can raise up my percentage of jumps and feel on top of the world again.

“It still hurts, but I think I can stand the pain,” she added. “I’ll be there at nationals. Even if it hurts, I’ll still try.”

With Kwan back in California, Lipinski put on her best performance of the season at the Champions Series final, nailing her triple lutz and showing she’s still got that magic from last year.

Which brings us back to nationals, the first head-to-head meeting between Kwan and Lipinski since October. And there’s more at stake than the U.S. title and the accompanying bragging rights. The winner heads to Nagano with a slight edge as the favorite for gold.

Todd Eldredge seeks his fifth U.S. title in the men’s event. He’s battling back from a shoulder injury suffered in October, but is a heavy favorite at nationals, as are ice dancers Elizabeth Punsalan and Jerod Swallow.

The pairs competition figures to be tight between defending champions Kyoko Ina and Jason Dungjen and the 1994-96 winners, Jenni Meno and Todd Sand.

With so much on the line, Kwan and Lipinski are doing their best to downplay the rivalry, saying all the right things about how the other is such a great competitor. You’ll never catch either saying she’d like to kick the other’s butt, like Tonya Harding once did.

The closest anyone’s come to starting something was Lipinski’s coach Richard Callaghan. After being badgered about Lipinski’s flutz-lutz, Callaghan said plenty of other women switch edges on their lutz takeoff, turning the jump into a flip.

Even Kwan?

“Both Tara and Michelle do the lutz very similar,” he said.

Not exactly heavy stuff, but Kwan and Lipinski prefer to do their trash-talking on the ice.

“I really focus on how I skate,” Kwan said. “If I skate my best, that would be good enough for me. If I don’t skate my best, everyone can win.”