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Ten months after the defining moment of the Nagano Winter Olympics--Tara Lipinski's dramatic victory over Michelle Kwan, in which the two athletes skated as if they had, respectively, nothing and everything to lose--the rivalry continues, at least in the endorsement arena. Unfortunately, since Lipinski retired from competitive skating shortly after the Olympics, the pair has yet to meet again on the ice with anything at stake, though they both appeared together this summer on an exhibition tour of 50-plus cities. Still defined by the rivalry, they are friendly, but not genuine friends.
Lipinski has said she gave up amateur competition so that she could spend more time with her family, making her perhaps the only teenager in America who actually wants to live at home. "More time," however, is a relative term. Lipinski's days are filled with promotional appearances at department stores and malls (even before the Olympics she had scored deals with DKNY and Mattel); her nights are filled with fund-raising galas and movie premieres. In her rare spare time, she tools around her home state of Texas in the black Corvette she got as part of her deal with autoweb.com Fans can keep up at taralipinski.com where her online diary--"I'll be in Dallas Sunday for Snapple"--gives one a fairly vivid and unintentionally depressing sense of what the daily grind is like for a 16-year-old sports celebrity. On the other hand, she's had the opportunity to meet Brad Pitt twice and to judge the Miss Teen USA pageant.
For her part, Kwan, 18, continues to skate at an elite level, showing no loss of determination in the wake of Nagano. She won this year's national and world crowns--titles Lipinski had taken from her the year before--and is already pointing toward the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. She also found time to graduate from high school in September with a 3.61 grade-point average; having taken the SATs three weeks ago, she is currently trying to decide whether college makes sense for her. "I always live with no regrets," she says, reflecting on the past year and, implicitly, Lipinski. "I can't say I didn't train hard enough because I did. People say you change after the Olympics, but it's not that way for me--no matter how many medals I win, no matter what I do. You always have to focus on something, and for me, that's skating." --Reported by Alice Park/New York