A Champion’s Life Filled With More Than Hard Work

There are those days when Pat Lipinski wishes her daughter had just taken piano lessons.

Then 15-year-old Tara Lipinski wouldn’t have become the reigning world and U.S. women’s figure skating champion. She wouldn’t be favored for gold at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

She also wouldn’t have moved more than 1,000 miles from home to train at the Detroit Skating Club.

And Pat might not have had to make sacrifices, like moving away from her husband, Jack, who maintains the family home in Sugar Land, Texas. Or quit her job as a secretary. She also wouldn’t have spent countless hours in a cold ice rink.

“I wish I could close my eyes--go back in time sometimes,” she says. “I see my girlfriends (whose daughters) don’t skate. Their husbands come home at 5, they have dinner, they go out, they play tennis, they have their social life, their friends come over, they have parties, the kids are there.”

But then she thinks again.

“When I see her so happy I say, ‘You know, don’t take it away from her. Let her do her thing.’ It’s her thing. And hopefully, maybe when she’s older . . . .”

She believes her daughter will come to understand the sacrifices parents make for their children and, in her case, the nurturing that goes into creating a world champion.

Tara was only 3 when she first showed talent and a love for skating. The journey hasn’t been easy since then. But it hasn’t been a solo trip either, with her mother, father, coach Richard Callaghan and four-time U.S. champion Todd Eldredge all helping her along the way.

“Whether they do good or bad, you’ve got to be there,” Jack Lipinski says. “The kids need a total support system.”

That system will be on display Oct. 22-26 at Skate America in nearby Detroit. Lipinski renews her rivalry with fellow teen-ager Michelle Kwan, while training partner Eldredge also begins his journey toward the Olympics.

“We both push each other,” Eldredge says. “We’re both perfectionists, so to speak. We work really hard.”

The job of making sure they’re both prepared belongs to Callaghan, who admits having them together makes things easier.

“Good skating breeds good skating,” Callaghan says. “It’s great for both of them. They’ve got funny personalities. They’re like brother and sister. They can get on each other’s case. They can make the other work a little harder. . . . They respect each other and they give each other their space when they need not to play.”

Often, though, they need to play.

Such as when the 25-year-old Eldredge begins mocking the constant attention given to figure skating’s youngest ever world champion.

“Uh, Miss Lipinski! Miss Lipinski! I have a question!”

The two share a laugh. The conversation soon digresses to hair-tugging, tickling and eventually a game of keep-away with Tara’s gloves.

“Some days we kid around with each other. Sometimes we have competitions with each other,” Eldredge says. “We kind of push each other that way and try to improve each other’s skating through those little games.”

Lipinski says the games and the competition are helpful. But being around skaters of such high caliber helps in other ways, too.

“You learn a lot from them and they motivate you,” she says. “It helps just coming in and having a great skater on the ice with you, seeing their programs and seeing them work on their artistic expressions and jumps.”

Despite the intensity of her training, Lipinski’s life isn’t all double axels, triple lutzes or her trademark triple loop-triple loop combination. There are other complications, like polynomial factorization, cellular mitosis, introductory Spanish--stuff the average ninth-grader needs to learn.

Though she hasn’t been to a regular school since sixth grade, she’s tutored three to four hours a day at home. And her mom says she’s promised to go to college.

“She’s got classes year-round, basically whenever the time permits,” math tutor Jerry Kotasek says, adding that her math grades are usually As and Bs. “She works very hard, she’s very energetic and she takes it very seriously. “She likes the idea of learning something new, which in mathematics is great.”

Except for the fact that she’s probably the most accomplished 15-year-old athlete on the planet, Lipinski’s parents insist she’s just a normal kid.

“If she’s not baking a cake, she’s out with her girlfriends,” Pat says. “She’s to the movies. She’s to the mall, she’s shopping. She rides bicycles, plays tennis, goes horseback riding.

“She really has a full life. It’s not just skating. It’s intensified around it. She knows she has to devote so many hours, because this is going to be her hardest year.”

Eldredge, though 10 years older than Tara, can relate. He won his first national championship when he was 18.

“It was definitely hard to adjust,” he says. “There’s sacrifices that you make. But there’s other things that we benefit from.”

For Tara, this is the only way of life she’s ever known.

“You have to sacrifice some things. Like, I’m not going to school, but I’m still getting a great education. And I have all my friends,” she says. “I would never want to give up this experience, as much as I love going in front of all the people and doing the best that I can.

“I hope skating will be in my life for a very, very long time. Even after the Olympics, skating will always be a part of my life.”