Do you care about sports? Well, you should care and hope Lipinski doesn't grow so satisfied with this medal that she no longer wants to get her hands on a second one.
This is our chance to have something missing for so long, something sports used thrive on, something Lipinski and Michelle Kwan can bring to us for the next four years: A rivalry. Kwan is on record. She'll see you at Salt Lake City in 2002. Here was Lipinski, the 15-year-old, discussing her future hours Saturday at White Ring Arena, where hours earlier she won the Olympic women's figure skating championship.
"I want to go home and see my dogs," she said.
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| Sports fans should hope that Tara Lipinski wants to earn a second gold medal. |
OK, so she deserves some time to celebrate the Olympic championship, and with the liberal rules of the International Skating Union, she can start cashing in on the medal for endorsements and appearance fees, and when she's bled everything out of the gold, experts estimate she'll make $10 million. Let her make every cent. As long as she doesn't decide to join the professional tour, Lipinski can skate as an amateur for the next four years until the Salt Lake City Olympics. There are lot of reasons for Lipinski to stay an amateur. All of them best for her, and best for the sport. Four years ago, Oksana Baiul, the Russian gold medalist, was 16. She turned pro. Yet she never had the earning power of Lipinski as an endorser. The silver medalist, Nancy Kerrigan, was 24, tired of the Tonya Harding mess, and it was time to move on.
This time, Lipinski and Kwan don't need a life of touring with the skating shows and professional exhibitions. Skating is the rare sport where the ranks of the amateurs provide the pinnacle of interest and intrigue. There will be time for them to have brilliant pro careers, but they have a unique chance to make Olympic history. They have a chance to fight for the gold on American soil. They will be bigger than life by the time Salt Lake comes around.
Lipinski plans to incorporate the triple axel and quadruple jump into her program. No female skater has landed a quad. Know what? This will force Kwan to lift her level of skating. The rest of the world gets left behind. The long skate on Friday doesn't have to be remembered as the end for Lipinski-Kwan, but maybe merely the night the stakes were raised. Back and fourth these two have gone. Lipinski wins the World Championship. Kwan wins the U.S. Nationals. Lipinski steals the gold. Back and fourth. Let it live on.
"The competition between Tara and Michelle makes them both better," said Carol Heiss-Jenkins, who twice was 1-2 with an American rival in the Olympics. "I was better because I had competition from my own countrymen. You meet them at nationals. You meet them at worlds. You meet them at the Olympics."
Says the father of the gold medalist, Jack Lipinski: "They've needed each other. They've used to each other to keep lifting the other's performance, to keep pushing."
Here come two bouncing teenage girls to take us into the turn of the century. The reason tennis is dying is there's no one to challenge Pete Sampras and Martina Hingis. People are praying for Venus Williams to turn into a Grand Slam champion. What's happened to the McEnroe-Borg, the Ali-Frazier, the Palmer-Nicklaus rivalries?
Forget team rivalries, too. Free agency destroyed them. When a Yankee-Red Sox game means nothing to the players, how can it matter to the fans? There are regional rivals across the country, Carolina-Duke and Giants-Dodgers, but most of the time, the games aren't able to transcend the passion beyond its backyard.
Especially after the Olympics, this is no longer simply an American rivalry. It's a world rivalry. Thing is, they're completely different as skaters and yet so close when it comes to judging. They could skate today and Kwan gets the gold medal. As long as the networks have Lipinski and Kwan, they'll be no touching those ratings.
This doesn't have to be a once-every-four-years rivalry. The smart marketers will turn this into a long running serial. People will watch the Skate America. They'll watch the U.S. Championships. They'll watch the Worlds. Who's going to skate perfectly this time? It will keep us coming back.
Kwan believes Lipinski has her gold medal. Nothing wrong with that. These two don't need sneaker commericals and promoters and hype to turn them into a classic American sports story. Give them the blades. Give them the ice. Let him have it out. Just let them skate.
