Few have had as much of an impact on figure skating as Tara Lipinski, from her first appearance at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships to her continued role promoting the sport as a broadcaster for NBC.
Lipinski took her talents to reality TV in 2026 when she joined the cast of The Traitors for season 4 alongside close friend Johnny Weir. And while the two tried to downplay their relationship in the castle, there was no downplaying her role as the face of the sport, as castmate Ian Terry recognized her immediately and appeared starstruck.
He had every reason to be. Lipinski is a U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame member, Olympic gold medalist and a pioneer for the women skaters who came after her. In fact, some of the technical aspects of modern routines were born out of Lipinski’s competitive drive early in her career.
Keep scrolling for everything to know about Tara Lipinski’s prolific career.
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Tara Lipinski Is an Olympic Gold Medalist
Tara Lipinski Jamie Squire /Allspor
Lipinski made her lone Olympic appearance count, winning the gold at age 15 at the 1998 games in Japan to become the youngest gold medalist in Olympic figure skating history. She came in second to Team USA rival Michelle Kwan in the short program before showing off her iconic triple loop-triple loop combination during the free skate to take home the win.
Tara Lipinski Was Dominant From a Young Age
In addition to making Olympic history as a teenager, Lipinski also won the 1997 U.S. Championships at age 14 and a month later won the World Championships. She became the youngest female to accomplish either feat.
Appropriately, she was also the youngest skater ever inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2013, at age 31.
Simone Biles is small in stature — just 4-foot-8 — but her reputation looms large. The Texas native started taking gymnastics classes at age 6 and earned an invite to the junior national team camp by 14. She had several world championship gold medals before she made her Olympics debut in Rio de Janeiro at […]
Tara Lipinski and Michelle Kwan Were Fierce Rivals
Chen Lu, Tara Lipinski and Michelle Kwan Photo by Jamie Squire/Allsport/Getty Images
Lipinski and Kwan had a short-lived but intense rivalry that was rooted in mutual respect. It began when the pair went head-to-head at the 1997 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Lipinski upset the heavily favored Kwan, who took an ill-timed fall on the ice that, she admits, caused her to lose her composure.
Years later, Lipinski told The Tennessean that the two never spoke again about that day.
“I always feel such a connection to Michelle even though we’re not up to date on each other’s lives,” she said in the 2022 interview. “We don’t really talk. We’ve never really sat down and talked about our past, although that would be an interesting conversation.”
She added, “We had a pretty intense rivalry, which I’m quite grateful for. I don’t think I would have pushed myself as hard as I did without Michelle Kwan. One of the best skaters of all time was making me work harder and harder.”
Simone Biles and MyKayla Skinner had a history long before the retired gymnast’s controversial comments about Team USA’s work ethic. “Besides Simone, I feel like the talent and the depth just isn’t what it used to be. I mean, obviously, a lot of girls don’t work as hard. The girls just don’t have the work […]
Tara Lipinski Made Figure Skating History in 1996 With 1 Move
Before the triple loop-triple loop combination was Lipinski’s signature move, she became the first woman to ever land it in a competition in 1997. Others have followed her since, but seeing a 14-year-old pull it off helped raise the bar for the women who followed.
Lipinski explained in a 2018 New York Times op-ed that she added the move to her arsenal as a way to beat Kwan.
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“How do you beat a perfect score?” she wrote. “To find a way to compete with her, my coaches and I needed to come up with a plan. My best chance, we decided, would be to add technical difficulty.”
Tara Lipinski Is Credited With Making Figure Skating More Complex
Lipinski’s loop-triple loop is now commonplace in the sport, as that technical difficulty she wrote became a new avenue to success. Jere Longman wrote in The New York Times at the time that Lipinski “has propelled the sport forward with the difficulty of her jumps,” and that holds true today.
“It’s little decisions like these that accumulate through the years and through the efforts of multiple athletes to push a sport forward, and I’m very proud to have played a small part in this evolution,” Lipinski wrote in her op-ed.
