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Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir: Armed With 21 Suitcases and Olympic Insight

Twenty years after Tara Lipinski's gold medal, Ms. Lipinski and her analyst partner, Johnny Weir, look back at their figure skating careers and how they continued to find success off the ice.

For this Olympics, we have 21 total suitcases. They’re all the size of Ford Focuses. Small trucks. Small trucks. Because we want to make sure that we’re prepared for anything. I mean, what if we get sent to the mountains? We’ve got to have a boot for that. What if we’re doing a solid interview with the president of somewhere? We have to have a brooch for that. I feel like, when you’re competing at the Olympics, the costume that you wear has to portray not only the music and the story of your choreography but also who you are as a person, what you’re all about, what you feel beautiful in. And of course, it has to stretch and move with you. I loved getting into the character of whatever I was skating to. So I skated attached to Anastasia, for example, for my Olympic short program. And I tried to copy her dress as much as I could, just so you feel like, when you step on the ice, this is a representation of your entire performance. [music] Probably at 13 or 14, I really didn’t know what my style would be. It was mainly whatever I wanted to wear. When I was a teenager, my style was very pop princess. I was very into the Christina Aguileras and ‘N Syncs of the world. My style was definitely a work in progress. Yeah. Mine was too. I feel like I’m thinking back to — remember when Uggs with, like, the jean skirt was in? Were you still a teenager for that? Yeah. I was. That wasn’t our time. Yeah. You’ve got to know your face and your body and your style and your vibe. And I rocked those bangs. And I was full. And my mom cut them with the Conair curling iron. Remember where you used to just — Those were around the world bangs. Yep. I feel like I credit my parents to keeping me very grounded and down to earth and never feeling like I should be anything but who I was. I grew up lower middle class in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania. And my parents were both very different from their families. And they always talked about the importance of being who you are, and if you are different, celebrating that and being as special as you can be, because coming from a town like I did, everyone’s the same. It’s 99.9% white Christians who may or may not have had a close run in with a cow at one point in their life. And that’s where I come from. So my mom was like, Johnny, go be special. Go do you. So when I’m choosing the things I wear or the things I say, it all really does come from the heart, because that’s all I know. I don’t know how to create an image. I don’t know how to be premeditated. And I don’t know how or understand why anybody would want to lie just for the sake of people thinking better or worse of them. I’m going to be who I am from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed until I die. And there’s nothing that’s going to change that. We like to provide our viewers with an atmosphere. It isn’t just, these are the people that are talking, and these are the people that are skating. Why not start off a show and get people ready for what they’re going to see? We are Olympians. So every Olympic cycle, we start training as soon as the Olympics are over. So as soon as we get the go-ahead and the O.K. that we’re going to work in Beijing, we’re going to be preparing.

2018 Winter Olympics

The 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea

Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir: Armed With 21 Suitcases and Olympic Insight

By Margaret Cheatham Williams, Deborah Acosta and Karen Crouse February 20, 2018

Twenty years after Tara Lipinski's gold medal, Ms. Lipinski and her analyst partner, Johnny Weir, look back at their figure skating careers and how they continued to find success off the ice.

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