Young AND Relentless

Sure, Tara Lipinski jumps high. At 4 feet 8 inches in her non-bladed feet, in a hey-look-up-here adult world, she probably gets more practice than most.

For every Michelle Kwan in her way, there’s also a department store counter, a backyard fence and a rinkside dasher board blocking the view. How to peer over to the other side? You might as well jump.

Back home, Lipinski has been called a sprite, a mite, a speck and a sprout. Or, if you prefer a popular pressroom moniker, which plays off her height and her wipe-the-ice-with-’em fiery intensity: Pocket Piranha.

Here, at the site of the 1997 World Figure Skating Championships, she is la petite prodigee de la glace. Or, according to another newspaper headline, she is la minuscule gamine--l’enfant who comes to Lausanne to challenge the stars of patinage artistique.

In whatever language, Lipinski is small. And dangerous. Last month at the U.S. national championships, she watched Kwan, the reigning world titlist, fall twice during her long program, creating an opportunity that Lipinski grabbed, squeezed and ultimately throttled.

Lipinski tried seven triple jumps, made all of them, bounded gleefully from one corner of Nashville Arena to the other and skated off as the youngest female to win a U.S. skating championship.

Now, at 14 years 9 months, Lipinski has a chance to become the youngest female world champion, eclipsing Sonja Henie, who was 14 years 10 months 12 days when she won her first world title in 1927.

At a U.S. team news conference Wednesday, Lipinski was asked what she knew about the legendary Henie.

Lipinski looked at her coach, Richard Callaghan, who was seated to her left, and tentatively ventured a response.

“Just that she won the Olympics . . . “ Lipinski said.

“Three times,” Callaghan whispered, trying to help her out.

It didn’t take.

Lipinski was stumped.

What did she know about Henie?

“Not too much,” Callaghan quickly concluded, prompting a roomful of reporters to break out in laughter.

Funny, but the same can be said for the world and Lipinski.

What do we know about the youngest, smallest, most precocious American ice skating champion yet? Not too much. That is by design--carefully plotted out years earlier by Lipinski’s parents, Jack and Pat, and fine-tuned in recent months by Edge Marketing and Management, which added Lipinski as a client shortly after her 13th birthday.

Lipinski has been groomed for this moment since the age of 6, when she traded roller skates for blades and had Jack stack crates in the backyard to create a pretend Olympic medals stand. It began as a family project, eventually to grow into an all-consuming obsession:

Team Lipinski, an Olympic gold medal or bust.

Today, the Lipinskis live apart in order to facilitate Tara’s skating career--Jack in Texas, where he is employed as a vice president for an oil company; Pat and Tara in Detroit, so Tara can train with Callaghan.

Skating, pretty much, is Tara’s entire life.

“She’s all business,” says her agent, Mike Burg, with obvious admiration.

Callaghan says he frequently has to drag Tara off the ice to end a practice session

“I can’t physically remove her,” Callaghan says with a laugh. “But when it’s time to finish and she wants to do more, we discuss why she wants to do more. If she can give me valid reasons, we’ll do more. But she’s 14 years old. I still want her to be healthy when she’s 24.”

Lipinski comes across equally well-rehearsed in interviews. Most of her responses are polished but clipped, rarely delving beneath the surface of her carefully crafted image.

During nationals, the Detroit Free Press reported that Lipinski had just lost a baby tooth, a molar. It was an anecdote that served to humanize Lipinski--a prodigious skating talent who still is, after all, just a kid.

Callaghan, however, was incensed. He felt the story would hurt Lipinski with the judges, believing they would knock down her artistic presentation scores because they would see her as a girl, rather than an adult--and the competition continues to be called “ladies” figure skating.

The packaging of Lipinski includes a website, taralipinski.com, which is basically a series of electronic news releases and a few ghost-written entries in “Tara’s Diary.” An excerpt: “I’ve got to tell you about the week after the Nationals, the trip to New York, the morning news shows, David Letterman . . . but, I’ve got a ton of homework and I’ve got to be up early for practice. I will talk to you again soon!”

“Do people know her?” Burg says of his youngest client. “No, they don’t. . . .

“I think Tara is a fierce competitor, and people can take that a variety of ways. She’s not here to party or to make friends with the world. She has a job to do.

“Should a 14-year-old be that way? If a 14-year-old wants to win, she has to be that way.”

A 14-year-old with her own agent and her own website could very well be the world’s next female skating champion. Lipinski skates her short program on Friday, her long program on Saturday and she has already impressed the judges here. Lipinski was the top-rated skater in Monday’s qualifying round.

And if she nails that, what next?

Her 15th birthday and her learner’s permit, of course.

Lipinski would have the money for a down payment--Kwan made roughly $1 million off her 1996 world championship--but Burg claims Lipinski has no interest in buying a car yet.

“Right now,” Burg says, “I think she’s hoping just to be able to sit down and reach the pedals.”