Lipinski Lets It All Hang Out In Skating Qualifying While Experienced Rivals Hold Back, U.S. Champ Nails Seven Clean Triples

Someone forgot to tell Tara Lipinski this was just the qualifying round. The 14-year-old U.S. champion showed no restraint Monday at the World Figure Skating Championships.

Lipinski nailed seven clean triples - repeating jump for perfect jump from her title-winning performances at the U.S. nationals last month and at an international competition at Hamilton, Ontario.

Lipinski skated as if this were the championship itself. Either out of fear, or experience, her top competitors held back.

World champion Michelle Kwan doubled out on two triples and cut another jump down to a single. Irina Slutskaya of Russia, the No. 3 skater in the world, nearly stopped jumping altogether in the second half of her program.

And China’s Chen Lu, who lost a close decision to Kwan last year, held back nearly every jump on her first return to competition since the 1996 worlds. She fell on her first jump, a triple lutz, then singled on four others. The misery showed on her face.

Lipinski and Kwan both led their qualifying rounds, confirming the world championship in 1997 will be a showdown between the two top American skaters - Kwan’s edge of maturity against Lipinski’s uncontainable energy with Nicole Bobek’s comeback adding a possible element of surprise.

The 42 skaters were split into two groups with the top 15 in each group advancing to the short program.

As the qualifyings showed, it’s not in Lipinski’s nature to hold back.

“She comes into the rink every day and wants to do 20 lutzes and 20 flips,” said Lipinski’s coach, Richard Callaghan.

After getting her jumping impulse under control, Callaghan and choreographer Lori Nichol worked on adding maturity to her program, with pulled back hair and lace and sequined costumes to match.

In the time it took the changes to take hold, Lipinski jumped from a 15th-place finish in the 1996 world championships to the skater to beat in 1997.

“The speed, the confidence and the height of jumps,” Callaghan said. “She’s a totally different package than a year ago.”

Lipinski’s grace is not elegant like that of Chen, 20, or Kwan, 16. Her movements are more studied, precise hand motions rigidly held until the required shift, rather than easily flowing positions.

And her quick rise, powered by her superb jumping ability, has raised concerns the women’s sport soon may be dominated by young jumpers who can rotate with an ease that’s hard to recapture after puberty shifts the center of gravity.

But Lipinski’s artistic marks in the qualifying round were mostly 5.7 or 5.8, in line with her technical marks. Three judges scored her higher artistically than technically, and only the Czech judge withheld full approval, awarding a 5.4 artistic mark.

“It would be disturbing if that was a majority,” Callaghan said. “But clearly the majority feel her artistic merit was in line with her technical merit - or at least within a 10th.”

If there’s room for improvement in Lipinski’s qualifying long program, only Callaghan could see it.

“I want the spinning a little faster. But this performance was great. If it happens again it would be OK,” he said, then catching himself, added “I mean ‘When.”’ But worries that the women’s sport may become too focused on jumping seemed to bear out in the scoring in the first qualifying round, easily dominated by Kwan.

Russia’s Slutskaya made a small error in landing a triple in an otherwise elegant program. But she finished third to France’s Vanessa Gusmeroli, who made three serious errors, but hit five triples to Slutskaya’s four.

Even Bobek, 19, second behind Lipinski in the second round, confessed that the rigors of jumping took its toll during the qualifying.

“I wasn’t as artistic as I usually am,” she said. “I was really concentrating on the jumps I could feel the lack in the artistry.”