NAGANO, Japan -- Less than two hours before skating for gold, Tara Lipinski sat in her parents' hotel room, eating spaghetti, panicking.
"She looked at me and got a little glassy-eyed," said Lipinski's mother, Pat. "I said, 'What's the matter?' She said, 'I think I'm scared.'
"I said, 'That's OK. This is the Olympics. You have every right to be scared. What do you want? It's not like you're going to a party.' "
Actually, it turned out she was, but neither mother nor daughter knew that as they went through their pre-competition routine.
By the end of the night, Pat would be standing at the side of the rink, holding bouquets of flowers in both arms, watching Tara receive a gold medal.
From Sewell, N.J., to Sugar Land, Texas, Wilmington, Del., to Bloomfield Hills, Mich., mother and daughter have always been at each other's side.
That is especially true in the hours before a competition, when Lipinski's father, Jack, leaves the hotel room so Pat and Tara can be alone.
"She'll talk it out with me," Pat said. "We sit down. She'll just tell me her fears. I tell her she can do it, she does it every day.
"Sometimes, there are a few tears, sometimes no tears, depending on the emotions of the day. Whatever it is, she gets it out of her."
And when Tara wells up?
"When she looks like that, I get nervous and don't want to say anything," Pat said. "I say, 'Please let me say the right thing to her.' Then when she leaves the room, I start crying."
But wait.
Even then, the routine isn't complete.
"She goes out, gives me a thumbs-up, then she always comes back," Pat said. "I wait for her. She knocks on the door. I turn and she says, 'I'm going to do it.' "
She certainly did it last night, and at the end of her spectacular long program, she reached her father on a cell phone inside the White Ring Arena and shouted, "Happy birthday!"
Jack's birthday is today; Pat's is Tuesday. They were born the same week at the same hospital in Jersey City, N.J. In a sense, they were closer to each other then than they are now.
Tara's early years were typical enough, with the family living in the New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia. But then Jack, a vice president for an oil refining company, got transferred to Sugar Land, outside of Houston.
Tara tried to continue her training, but ice time was limited, and often at odd hours. It was then that the family made a major decision -- Tara and Pat would move to Delaware, and reunite with Tara's old skating coach.
Most of the family is back East, and that eased the strain of the separation. But it wasn't long before the Lipinskis began a nationwide search for a new coach, and settled on Richard Callaghan of Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
Pat and Tara moved again.
"It was hard in the beginning," Pat said. "But you learn to live how you have to live, for what you want to do for somebody."
Jack lives during the week at the family's 5,000-square-foot home in Texas, then visits his wife and daughter on weekends.
His phone bill?
"I'd rather not say," he said, smiling. "I get a good rate from the phone company. I'm on their high-user list."
Jack also declined to estimate how much the family has spent on Tara's training.
"Enough," he said, smiling again.
The investment clearly paid off -- Tara was the U.S. and world champion in 1997, and now she is an Olympic gold medalist.
"I have no regrets. I never did have any regrets," Pat said. "It was just difficult sometimes."
And it all came back to her as she watched the long program with her husband from a vantage point high atop the arena.
"I saw her in the rink at 3 years old, 5 years old. I kept thinking about her whole 13 years of skating," Pat said.
"It flashed before my eyes. Her ups and downs, the times I held her when she didn't skate well. It all went through my head."
And Jack?
"I didn't breathe for four minutes. I don't think my heart beat for four minutes," he said.
It's funny what parents will remember at such times. Jack thought back to his initial reaction when Tara was born.
"When I had a daughter, holding her in my arms, we were joking, 'I guess I don't have to worry about having an athlete in the family,' " Jack said.
Why did he think that?
"Just because it was a girl. You always think boys are going to be athletes, girls are going to be ballerinas."
She is an athlete. She is a ballerina. She is an Olympic champion.
How Lipinski won
How the judges placed Tara Lipinski and Michelle Kwan in the free program at the Winter Olympics:
Tara Lipinski
.. .... .. .. .. .. ..Aus ..Hun ..Aut ..Ger ..USA ...Rus ...Ukr ..Pol ..Fra
Placement .. .. .. .. ..1 ...1 .. .1 .. .2 .. .2 .. ..1 .. ..1 .. .2 .. ..1
Technical merit ... ..5.9 .5.9 ..5.9 ..5.8 ..5.8 ...5.9 ...5.9 ..5.8 ...5.9
Artistic impression ..5.8 .5.8 ..5.9 ..5.8 ..5.8 ...5.9 ...5.9 ..5.8 ...5.9
Michelle Kwan
.. .... .. .. .. .. ..Aus ..Hun ..Aut ..Ger ..USA ...Rus ...Ukr ..Pol ..Fra
Placement .. ..... .. ..2.. ..2.. ..2.. ..1.. ..1.. ...2.. ...2.. ..1.. ..2
Technical merit.. .. .5.7 ..5.7 ..5.8 ..5.7 ..5.8 ...5.8 ...5.7 ..5.7 ..5.8
Artistic impression ..5.9 ..5.9 ..5.9 ..5.9 ..5.9 ...5.9 ...5.9 ..5.9 ..5.9
Notes: Lipinski won six first-place votes from the nine judges, one more than required to win by a majority. The judges from Germany, the United States and Poland placed Kwan first. Two of Kwan's three first-place votes (Germany and Poland) were determined by the tiebreaker -- the mark for artistic impression. Overall, Lipinski, with the first-place vote in the free skate, worth two-thirds of the total score, overcame Kwan's first place in the short program, worth one-third.
Pub Date: 2/21/98
