Tara Lipinski

Lipinski's first major victory occurred at the 1994 U.S. Olympic Festival, where she earned a gold medal. Moving into the junior ranks, she took the silver medal at the 1995 USFSA Junior Championship. Already hailed as a potential figure-skating star for her jumping ability, Lipinski made an impressive debut in the senior-level ranks with a third-place finish at the 1996 USFSA National Championship in San Jose. Although Michelle Kwan garnered most of the headlines at the event with her stunning "Salome" program, Lipinski's bronze medal was good enough to earn her a spot on that year's U.S. delegation to the International Skating Union's (ISU) World Championship.

Although her rise had been nothing short of spectacular up to that point, Lipinski encountered her first major setback at the 1996 World Championship. Her performance in the short (or technical) program left her in twenty-third place and had almost disqualified her from the final free skate, in which only the top twenty-four competitors skated. Although she was shaken by the experience, Lipinski rebounded with a free skate that was nearly perfect, and she ended up in fifteenth place overall.

At the 1997 U.S. National Championship in Nashville, Tennessee, fourteen-year-old Lipinski stunned the figure skating community with a victory over heavily favored Michelle Kwan, who stumbled badly in the free skate. Lipinski's most surprising move was the triple-loop, triple-loop jump, which she had mastered only at the beginning of the season. Although her artistry and presence on the ice were sometimes criticized as too youthful in comparison to the other skaters, Lipinski's sheer jumping and spinning abilities were indeed the best of any skater in the competition. Despite her victory—which made her the youngest-ever U.S. champion—Lipinski did not go to the World Championship as the favorite, as most observers expected Kwan or Russia's Irina Slutskaya to take the gold medal. After Kwan and Slutskaya both made mistakes in the short program, Lipinski entered the free skate in first place. Again performing a perfect program, Lipinski placed second to Kwan in the free skate but emerged as the first-place skater overall. The feat made her into the youngest-ever World Champion in women's figure skating.

Few athletes in the sport's history had made such a sudden rise to the top of the American and world ranks in figure skating, and Lipinski's achievements came at the price of intense scrutiny. To some critics, Lipinski's victories proved that jumping ability had surpassed artistic development in importance to the judges; some also feared the impact of forcing young athletes to perform technically difficult moves before their bodies had fully matured. Yet as the most technically brilliant skater among her contemporaries, Lipinski also received praise for her single-minded dedication to the sport. An intense competitor, Lipinski did not give her rivals—especially Michelle Kwan—a chance to rest on their laurels.