Welcome to TaraRulz.com. The largest website dedicated to the 1998 Olympic, 1997 World and National, and World Professional figure skating champion, Tara Lipinski.
As a new queen of the ice is crowned in Sochi, we asked NBC Sports Olympics commentator and Olympic gold medalist Tara Lipinski to look back at her big moment at the 1998 Nagano Games, in honor of Throwback Thursday.
“I was obviously beyond elated,” she said, looking at a photo of herself at 15 years old reacting to winning figure skating gold. “I think I just felt a lot of relief. Because there was just so much pressure leading up to this — years of training. Then the months right before the Games were very stressful and that week in the competition I was so nervous. I don’t know what I was doing. Obviously I was losing my mind screaming.”
t the time, she was the youngest person to win a medal in the Winter Olympics for an individual event. Sixteen years after winning gold, Lipinski is still making waves in the figure skating world with her fresh, fun and expert commentary alongside Johnny Weir. And the two have captivated audiences who haven’t stopped buzzing about the high-end—and sometimes eccentric—style they sport.
But Lipinski wasn’t always such a fashionista. When asked about the thinking behind the skating outfit she wore during her win, she admitted that (gasp!) she didn’t pay much attention to what she wore on the ice back then.
Lipinski’s blue skating costume, along with her gold medal, lives in the World Figure Skating Museum and Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs, Colo, but she said she has no idea what became of that famed blue scrunchie.
What she does remember is meeting hockey legend Wayne Gretzky the night she won her medal—a dream come true for a 15-year-old hockey fan.
“It was very late, and I wanted to grab some food, and Wayne Gretzky was there and celebrating. He said ‘Let’s all grab an ice cream,’” she recalled. “And so me and the hockey team were just chillin’. I was a kid having an ice cream with Wayne and it was just one of those moments that you can never imagine happening.”
Lipinski says that these days, she strives to be the way she was at that age, driven but also honest about who she is and excited about the world around her.
“I was such a baby and it just brings back a lot of good memories; I wouldn’t change it for the world,” she said. “I think it makes me always remember that you should just be yourself—because I look back and even though there were a lot of people watching, I was just always honest about how I felt.”
"1998 Olympic figure skating gold medal winner Tara Lipinski trades in her skates to try out biathlon on the Steve Harvey Show. See who wins their "friendly" competition."
Posted by Angie on Thursday February 20, 2014
Todays Theme: Athenian Gold
Posted by Angie on Thursday February 20, 2014
Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski with their perfect hair and perfect shade have been the best part of these Olympics, full stop. Handling the skating commentary for NBC Sports Network, Weir and Lipinski have made primetime coverage redundant. Why listen to Scott Hamilton's proclamations when you can hear these two real-life friends analyze axels while talking about their love of Coldplay or Les Miz? With the final figure skating event upon us, we've begun to ever-so-slightly but ever-so-definitely panic. How exactly are we expected to go back to our old Weir- and Lipinski-less lives? There has to be something we can do. So we're brainstorming ways we can permanently have Johnny and Tara in our lives. Or at least put off the heartache a while longer.
Today Show Contributors
This is the obvious one, considering Johnny and Tara are currently employed by NBC and have already palled around on the network's signature morning show during the Olympics. We see these two doing oddball segments during various sporting events (much like this morning's Today segment where they played tennis against Savannah Guthrie and Jenna Bush for absolutely no reason), Fashion Week, et cetera. They can fill in for 10 a.m. hosts Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford as needed, drinking cocktails way too early in the morning. Honestly, though, while this is definitely one of the most realistic options, it's pretty predictable and mild. Plus, once Matt Lauer goes full-on Dark Lord, there won't be a Today show left anyway. We want more for Johnny and Tara.
Reality Show
This too is almost too easy, especially considering Weir has already had his own reality show in Be Good Johnny Weir. Their Instagram videos have shown that it would be fun just to watch them hang out, but part of the glory of their stint during the Olympics has been their sassy commentary on others. So we envision some sort of skating reality competition. Not, of course, a skating-with-the-stars type thing, but maybe one in which they enlist other skaters to create the perfect exhibition skate, choosing the music, costumes, and moves.
Reality Show Guest Judges
While a full-time reality show would allow you to see the best of Johnny and Tara's behind-the-scenes antics, what we're going to miss most of all is their ability to evaluate other competitors accurately, breezily, and insightfully. It's not their fashion choices that we've been listening to for two weeks, after all. With this in mind, wouldn't they make for perfect So You Think You Can Dance guest judges? Nigel Lythgoe's dance competition has been hungry for guest judges in recent seasons, to verrry mixed results (maybe time to take a season off, Jesse Tyler Ferguson). The problem with too many guest judges is that they have neither the expertise nor the inclination to be critical. While skating and dance are not perfectly analogous, Weir and Lipinski certainly know enough to be able to make smart, quippy critiques.
Or! With the recent news that Cee Lo Green will be leaving The Voice for good, wouldn't Johnny and Tara be ideal replacements. Sorry, Usher. You're fine for the every-other-year Shakira seasons, but we need something special for when Christina Aguilera graces the show with her presence. Can you imagine the thrill of that first episode, the first contestant, when that chair turns around and it's Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski in the same pod? Don't give this opportunity away, NBC!
Girls
Despite a few dips into the stunt-casting well, Lena Dunham has kept Girls relatively cameo-free as the show heads toward the end of its third season. Still, for one episode, we could absolutely see Weir and Lipinski cross paths with Hannah, Jessa, and company. Perhaps another encounter with Elijah brings a different group of fabulous friends, including a shade-throwing russophile and his gal pal with the Elsa-from-Frozen hairstyle. Maybe Johnny's on a casting call with Adam, in the same episode that Tara and Shosh end up in a midnight study group together. We're just throwing things at a wall here. Willing to brainstorm this one. No ideas are bad ideas.
Oscar Co-Hosts
Granted, it's pretty late in the game to make this change, but are we 100% sure we couldn't swap out Ellen Degeneres for Tara and Johnny as Oscar hosts? Nothing against Ellen, of course, but she's done this before. Wouldn't a Weir/Lipinski duo be more fun? Johnny and Tara in American Hustle costumes; Johnny and Tara in outer-space vignettes; Johnny and Tara presenting the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award winner. It doesn't solve the problem entirely, since it would only push back our Weir- and Lipinski-less lives by a few weeks. But it's a start.
The New True Detective Detectives
This is our dream. The brass ring. In just a few short episodes, the McConaughey/Harrelson True Detective will be over and HBO will have to find new leads for their anthology series. Why not Weir and Lipinksi? HEAR US OUT! Take True Detective out of the south and move it to Michigan, where there are a series of murders all connected one rink that is known for training two ice dancing pairs champions. Weir's character sees symbolims in every sequin and feather; he's is constantly in conflict with his more straightforward partner, played by Lipinski.
Posted by Angie on Thursday February 20, 2014
"TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie and Jenna Bush Hager can’t match the skating skills of Olympians Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski, but they come head-to-head in an epic tennis match against the duo. “We are scrappy,” said Weir."
"Former Olympic figure skaters Johnny Weir & Tara Lipinski join Bob Costas to preview the tough competition in Wednesday's ladies figure skating competition, including thoughts on South Korea's Yuna Kim and Gracie Gold of the U.S."
Posted by Angie on Wednesday February 19, 2014
Over lunch at a Russian restaurant near the Olympic Park, NBC figure-skating commentators Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski are talking about one of the hottest new pairs teams here: themselves. "We're very lucky that we have each other," Weir says. "I find that Tara pushes me in this role." "To have found my co-pilot here, it's been almost like a rejuvenation," agrees Lipinski.
Two-time Olympian Weir and Lipinski, a 1998 gold medalist, are commentators here for NBC Sports Network, translating quads, triple axels and scores for viewers at home. It is the ideal gig for a retired competitive figure skater—think Dick Button and Peggy Fleming. But Weir and Lipinski are taking their Olympic commentating debut to a new level. For starters, their outfits are coordinated: pink jackets (hot pink for him, light pink for her), sequins, lace T-shirts, not to mention tiaras and chunky necklaces.
And then there is the commentary itself. Figure-skating talk can often be as flat as an ice rink. Not with these two. Their banter is fun and fresh. "Anyone feeling Hunger Games here?" Lipinski remarked about a skater's costume in the men's competition last week. Meanwhile, Weir noted that another skater waited too long to take off on a jump.
Praise is pouring in. The two need their own talk show, one fan tweeted. Weir is "hands down the best part of the NBC coverage at #SochiOlympics!" another wrote. Button, himself not afraid to call it like it is, dubbed them "witty, informative, intelligent" in a tweet earlier this week. Says NBC Olympics Executive Producer Jim Bell, "I can't recall rookie announcers ever making this kind of immediate impact on such a big stage."
Weir and Lipinski aren't on prime time like veteran NBC commentators Scott Hamilton and Sandra Bezic. But unlike those two, Weir and Lipinski are broadcasting live, to an audience that doesn't want to wait for its figure-skating fix.
Over lunch, Weir and Lipinski talked about their new partnership and Weir's ties to Russia. He speaks Russian, has an American husband of Russian descent and is close to many Russian skaters—including Evgeni Plushenko, the injured star who sparked controversy when he withdrew in dramatic fashion last week from the men's individual competition in Sochi.
Draped in a Russian mink fur he bought in Sochi, Weir held Lipinski's leg on his lap in the car on the way to lunch so that she could ice her knee, which she hurt playing tennis that morning. At lunch, he gave her 13 roses—because according to Russian tradition, even numbers of flowers are given only for funerals. In Russian, he ordered food for the table—a beet and vegetable salad known as "vinegret," borscht, blini and khachapuri, a Georgian cheese bread.
"Ultimately this is a long-term thing hopefully for us," Weir says of his work with Lipinski with NBC, "and we're going to try to make the biggest splash we can in our first Olympics so that people know to look for us and know to support us and know that in the future we will be the people teaching them about these skaters."
After hours getting their makeup done, the two take to the air each night of a competition. Then they study the skaters who will be performing the following day and "bounce ideas off each other about how we can bring up certain stories about each skater, how to best frame and make the skater that people are watching human. That's very important to us," Weir says.
Lipinski, 31, retired from Olympics competition after her 1998 triumph. But Weir, 29, was planning as recently as last summer to compete in Sochi, only to announce his retirement in October.
"It just got too hard, honestly," he says. "I had the option of choosing a happy life or to be alone for more time and completely alienate everybody and all of my friends and family once again, to diet like crazy, to get yelled at every day. It is all worth it, but there comes a time in your life when you have to decide what's next. "I feel inspired that I'm on a team now, and that's something that I never felt in figure skating," he says.
Weir says he has been fascinated with Russia and its culture since he checked a book called "Russia and her States" out of the library at age 6. "It's a very soulful culture," he says.
He learned to speak the language partly by watching Russian movies and listening to music. He sought out Russian coaches—"I was looking for the Russian toughness in my training," he says—and befriended Russian figure skaters, including one who gave him a Soviet "CCCP" jacket for good luck that he wore at his first Olympics.
Now, he takes five to six trips a year to Russia, both to skate and for personal reasons. People recognize him in Moscow, and Russian audiences are "so knowledgeable" and have opinions about figure skating, he says.
Weir says that he doesn't fear being in Russia despite a new "gay propaganda" law, partly because he's well known. An arrest would draw attention to the plight of the gay community in the country, he says. But he isn't wearing his wedding rings in Sochi. "I didn't want to be provocative," he says. "They're with me, but I just don't wear them." "My biggest stance is to be here, to wear my crazy clothes and to be me," he says.
"Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir have garnered much attention during the Sochi Olympics for their grandiose fashion choices. Not only do the two former Olympians coordinate their ensembles, but they also take care to meticulously break down the aesthetic choices of the athletes they cover. Lipinski and Weir explain what fashion means to them and correlation between looking good and performing well."
Posted by Angie on Wednesday February 19, 2014
"It’s the moment Ashley Wagner (and Mirai Nagasu) fans have been waiting for: The ladies’ figure skating event gets underway Feb. 19 in Sochi with the short program. You can watch live on NBCSN or NBCOlympics.com starting at 10 a.m. ET. (The free program follows at 10 a.m. ET on Feb. 20, when medals are awarded). Before she left for Sochi, 1998 Olympic gold medalist Tara Lipinski, who’s been providing commentary for all of NBCSN’s live figure skating coverage with Johnny Weir and Terry Gannon, gave us the backstories on Americans Gracie Gold, Polina Edmunds, and Wagner. Get your crash course below."
Posted by Angie on Wednesday February 19, 2014
Even as the Winter Olympics have added ultra-acrobatic sports familiar mainly to X Games fans, figure skating has remained a bedrock event for the network that carries the Winter Olympics.
Figure skating suits a network’s need for lavish prime-time extravaganzas that can be apportioned like chapters in a story.
In Sochi, Russia, NBC has increased figure skating volume by using an array of technology that was unavailable to ABC in its Olympic heyday, or even to NBC just eight years ago. It is streaming all the events live online, televising it live on cable on NBCSN and broadcasting key dances and programs on delay in prime time on NBC. Prime time was once the only place to watch any Olympic programming.
“This was an opportunity to help develop NBCSN by putting a lot of live hours on it,” said Jim Bell, the executive producer of NBC Olympics. “In London, we took a step forward and put a lot of live hours on NBCSN. In Sochi, the one sport that we could push the envelope with was figure skating. It’s weatherproof and there are a lot of hours.”
One of the eureka moments of the 2012 London Games was that live television and online coverage helped push viewership upward in prime time. So NBCSN was endowed with live hours to show team figure skating, pairs, ice dancing, and the men’s and women’s programs. And it got its own announcers: Tara Lipinski, the 1998 women’s gold medalist, and Johnny Weir, a two-time Olympian, along with Terry Gannon, who called figure skating for ABC.
NBC uses its old reliable prime-time crew: Tom Hammond, Scott Hamilton, Sandra Bezic and Tracy Wilson. They work in different perches, far away from each other, at the Iceberg Skating Palace.
NBCSN’s announcers call every skater, every pair and every dance team. NBC’s team calls a sampling. For example, NBCSN showed all 30 competitors in the men’s short program. NBC taped eight or nine of them.
“Prime time is so time-structured,” said David Michaels, the coordinating producer of figure skating for NBC Olympics. “We do so much juggling.” But with such a continuous flow on NBCSN, Weir and Lipinski have more time to tell stories, often about skaters who never show up on NBC.
Asked if he wanted to call every skating routine, Hamilton said, with a laugh, “I’m not sure I’d want to work that hard.”
Weir said that his skater-after-skater-after-skater schedule has been exhausting. “Tara and I take our work seriously,” he said. “She’s my work wife. And she’s a slave driver, so we sit up and study until she’s satisfied. We not only plan how we look, but we’re up until three in the morning looking at all the skaters’ backgrounds and biographies.”
The textures of the two productions are distinct. By design, the NBCSN version is plainer because it uses the broadcasting feed transmitted worldwide by the International Olympic Committee. NBC mixes its cameras with the world feeds, and stitches together a fairy tale with features and cuts to backstage scenes, as it did when the Russian Evgeni Plushkeno withdrew from the short program.
As different as the productions are, so are the announcers’ personalities. Hamilton can be as dramatic as he was more than 20 years ago, when he started broadcasting at the 1992 Albertville Winter Games.
Weir is generally calmer yet colorful. And his chemistry with Lipinski suggests an ongoing, enthusiastic conversation among confidants.
“We’re very good friends, and we have the best time educating people about our sport,” Weir said. Asked if he thinks he has surprised viewers who might have expected analysis as flashy as his wardrobes, he said: “I come from a small town in Pennsylvania, so I’ve spent a lot of time educating my family about my sport. It’s something I’ve learned to do without being aggressive or arrogant.”
Hamilton, who won the men’s gold in 1984 and is calling his seventh Olympics, said: “Johnny and Tara have brought a new and fun energy with them. They’ve bonded. They’re of one mind.”
Michaels hired Weir initially to call selected events on Universal Sports and then on NBCSN. “There was so much chemistry that I felt, wow, Johnny tours with all these people and he knows everybody, and Tara is one of the hardest-working analysts I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I’ve been producing this for 30 years and they put a smile on my face.”
It is possible that Weir and Lipinski will move into prime time when the Winter Games shift to Pyeongchang, South Korea, in 2018. NBC executives declined to speculate. But there is a rhythm to such things. Dick Button’s analysis of Olympic figure skating on ABC gave way to Scott Hamilton’s on CBS and NBC. And Hamilton seems prepared for that eventuality.
“I consider my role at NBC for as long as I’ve had it to be an incredible blessing,” he said. “We’ve been doing a pretty good job, but however this works, if they go live in prime time in four years, NBC will still need two teams.”
Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski join Willie Geist in the Orange Room to discuss ice dancing fashion.
Posted by Angie on Tuesday February 18, 2014
"Born out of a work partnership, but bred through a love for both figure skating and fashion, Lipinski and Weir have become fast friends inside and outside of the broadcast booth. The pair even have plans to take their friendship to the ice, possibly performing to some "gangster rap."
Posted by Angie on Tuesday February 18, 2014
"NowThisNews and TODAY round up the runway-worthy looks of former Olympians and NBC Sports commentators Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski and give us a sneak peek at what they packed for the Sochi Olympics."
Posted by Angie on Monday February 17, 2014
Photo from day 10 of the Olympics has been added to the gallery.
Posted by Angie on Monday February 17, 2014
Not that Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir plan on getting stranded on a deserted island, but they know what they’d take with them.
“Hershey bars,” blurted Lipinski without hesitation. Upon confirmation that they each get to bring three things, Weir added, “Chablis, so we’re good with food and water.”
Lipinski initially made a push for moisturizer, but Weir admitted he “doesn’t feature ‘dewey’ skin.”
Once they realized they only had a few wishes left, it occurred to the pair they’d still be naked. Instead of clothes, Lipinski opted for their handbags.
“Would a Swarovsky encrusted harpoon fit here? Yes, Swarovsky harpoon.”
The duo was prompted to think about their survival… but said they’d bring along their friend. “We can eat her,” Weir deadpanned.
After much deliberation, Weir summarized “We’ve got chocolate, wine, moisturizer, powder, a harpoon for killing things.”
“And our friend for fun!” Lipinski chimed in.
“That’s all we need,” Weir joked. “We’d be naked anyway.”
Posted by Angie on Monday February 17, 2014
Posted by Angie on Monday February 17, 2014
If you aren't watching the Sochi Olympics, you might be missing one of the hottest couples on television: former Olympians Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir. The ice-skaters are commentating for NBC Sports Network, but it's not just their broadcasting skills that have everyone buzzing.
They are BFFs off the air and they share a flair for fashion. Each day, they document their matching ensembles and accessories on their shared and individual Instagram accounts. It's hard to say who is better dressed, but they don a variety of headpieces, necklaces and other accessories that coincide with the figure-skating event happening that day.
NBC knew exactly what they were getting when they hired the colorful Weir, a 2006 and 2010 Olympian. The network brought him on board because of that bold personality. In fact, they see a strong future for Weir and 1998 Olympic gold medalist Lipinski.
NBC Sports chairman Mark Lazarus told Sports Illustrated, "They are terrific They have done a great job. They have been on the air for the last several months for all kinds of Grand Prix events. The chemistry is there and real. They are pals."
He continued, "Someday, some of those guys [NBC prime time hosts Scott Hamilton and Sandra Bezic] are either going to want off, or not be able to do it the way they are have always been capable of doing it and it is good to have depth and succession."
