Tara Lipinski

The question in inevitable, and Tara knows she'll probably hear it the rest of her life. This summer, as she's been going around the country teaching children's skating clinics, it comes up at practically every question-and-answer session.

How did it feel to win the Olympic gold medal?

"I can't put it into words," she tells a group of about 100 children at a recent clinic in Plano. "It's a memory I can look back on … that moment when you skated the best you could. It's a feeling you can't describe. I can't explain it."

Ah, well. She's a skater, not a poet. But hey, cut the kid some slack. She doesn't have to explain it. If you saw her perform her long program the night of Feb. 20, 1998, you could tell how she felt. Every square inch of her fleet-footed, 4-foot-11 frame seemed to radiate the fact that she was having the skate of her life.

Source: Nancy Kruh, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, August 3, 1999, p. K6313.