What did Tara Lipinski do that put her in front of Michelle Kwan?
What did she do? She just stole the evening. She got four 5.9s on the artistic part, which was surprising. This is an upset of immense proportions. We’re still analyzing it. They both did seven triple jumps. It’s not like one of them did fewer. You have spoken in the past about the tremendous qualitative difference between Kwan and Lipinski, that Kwan was a much more mature skater than Lipinski. I guess now you can call me your former figure skating expert … Seriously, that difference was evident in the short program Wednesday. One Hungarian judge said he could have placed 12 people between Michelle and Tara. But something happened between Wednesday and Friday. Was Lipinski’s program suddenly more sophisticated than usual? It’s hard to say. Look, this is figure skating, and there’s always going to be a lot of gray area. Tonight, we’ve got the biggest gray area ever. I wish I could give you answers. I really cannot say why, except that tonight, Michelle was a bit tentative. But when y
