Lipinski’s World Still Small One

LAUSANNE, Switzerland —  A 14-year-old munchkin sits atop the world of women’s figure skating today, and now the sport of ladylike grace and comportment must come to grips with a champion who plans to celebrate the accomplishment by organizing a weekend sleepover.

Tara Lipinski became the youngest, tiniest skating champion of them all Saturday, even though she failed to outskate fellow American Michelle Kwan in the long program--holding on to edge Kwan for the gold medal on the strength of points accrued, fittingly enough, with her short program, completed a day earlier.

With Lipinski, of course, it’s a very short program. The new world champion stands 4 feet 8 inches before she slips on her skates and often disappears behind the dasher boards if you happen to be watching one of her performances at ice level.

She was hard to miss on the leaders board at the World Figure Skating Championships, however, placing first in the short program to Kwan’s fourth.

That distance, ultimately, provided the difference. Kwan, the 1996 world champion, won Saturday’s long program with her first glitch-free skate in more than a month, a long-awaited awakening from what Kwan laughingly had referred to earlier in the week as “my coma.”

Lipinski, whipping her diminutive frame through seven clean triple jumps, more than any of the top eight finishers, took second in the long program. It was a typical Lipinski routine: all boundless energy, more a mad dash across the ice than an elegant waltz, with the judges’ marks to show for it.

Lipinski received four 5.9 scores for technical merit, only one for artistic presentation. Kwan, in contrast, had six artistic scores of 5.9, one for technical merit.

“She skates young,” said Brian Boitano, the former Olympic gold medalist here working as a commentator for ABC-TV. “She’s a young girl. It’s nothing bad. It’s nothing great. It’s young.”

The youngest to produce a world championship, Lipinski won her title at the age of 14 years nine months and 12 days--32 days younger than Sonja Henie when Henie won her first championship in 1927.

Asked if a world title before her 15th birthday had ever been a part of her “wildest dreams,” Lipinski turned up the volume on her ever-present smile and replied, “No. I never expected it. Especially not this year.

“It’s a big shock. But I love it.”

Kwan was 15 when she won the title a year ago. For her to successfully defend it, she needed Lipinski to place no higher than third in the long program.

But with one skater left, Russia’s Irina Slutskaya, the long program standings were all-American--Kwan first, Lipinski second.

Slutskaya, the two-time European champion, skated strongly, hitting six triple jumps and two combinations, producing an oddly skewed scorecard. Three judges--from Austria, Hungary and Slovakia--ranked Slutskaya’s long program the best of the field; the other six rated it third.

That kept Lipinski second, high enough for her to hold onto the overall lead. Kwan settled for the silver medal and Vanessa Gusmeroli of France, second after Friday’s short program, took the bronze.

Nicole Bobek, the third American skating at these world championships, finished 13th, barely 48 hours after the death of her coach, Carlo Fassi, stricken by a heart attack Thursday.

Real life encroached hard on these championships, as Kwan observed Saturday when she alluded to Scott Hamilton, the 1984 Olympic gold medalist who last week was given a diagnosis of testicular cancer.

“We were talking about Scott Hamilton,” Kwan said. “He’s struggling for his life. We’re just competing. This is nothing.

“Finally, I said to myself, ‘Let’s just have fun.’ ”

A day earlier, Kwan had stormed off the ice after two-footing a triple-lutz landing, a critical mistake that dropped her to fourth place in the short program. She attributed the gaffe to nerves, to fretting too much about a loss of form that seemed to follow her from Nashville, where she fell twice during the U.S. championships, to Lausanne like a dark cloud.

Saturday, Kwan said, the sun broke through again.

“It’s a wonderful feeling to fly again,” Kwan said. “In Nashville, I was afraid. Afraid of jumping, afraid of attacking, afraid of everything. Today, I just said, ‘OK, I’m going to show them what I’ve got.’ ”

Her coach, Frank Carroll, said he believes “Michelle had a very big lesson to learn this year: When you’re champion, you have come out and fight and battle.”

The lesson was delivered by a pint-sized tutor named Tara who collects stuffed animals almost as tall as herself, trains four hours a day five days a week and then kicks out the jams every weekend by having a girlfriend sleep over at her parents’ house.

Ladies figure skating isn’t just for ladies anymore. Whether that’s good for skating--and good for the champion--will be tested in the next 10 months leading to the 1998 Winter Olympics.

But a gold-medal rivalry between two American females whose idea of bodily contact involves hugging, not lead-pipe mugging, has to be healthy for the sport.