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| | Monday, March 27 Lipinski wins women's world title; Kwan second | |||||
| Tara Lipinski won the women's title at the World Figure Skating Championships today to become the youngest women's champion in history.
At 14 years, nine months and 12 days, Lipinski is 32 days younger than Sonja Henie when the Norwegian won the first of her 10 world titles in 1927. Michelle Kwan, the defending champion, was second. Kwan actually won the free skating with a superb artistic presentation. But being fourth after Friday's short program put her too far behind to catch up with Lipinski. Vanessa Gusmeroli of France was third. Lipinski made on all seven triple jumps for the third consecutive major competition. Since the beginning of February, Lipinski has won the U.S., the Champions Series final and the world titles. She had marks of all 5.8 except for one 5.7 and 5.6 in artistic. Lipinski needed every jump and every mark to hold off Kwan, who made a determined bid to hold on to the title that she won last year. Kwan did six clean triples and only scaled down one triple to a double. Still her program showed her maturity and gained two 5.8s and seven 5.9s for presentation. She was especially happy hitting the triple lutz-double toe loop combination that doomed her to fourth in the short program and made it virtually impossible to beat Lipinski. "I just had to know that I could do it. Things haven't gone well for me this season, with the nationals and the Grand Prix," said Kwan. "But today I got my act back together." Gusmeroli held on for a medal with a program that started off roughly but smoothed out. Irina Slutskaya of Russia was fourth, battling back after a hard fall in Friday's short program and practice this morning. Slutskaya made six triples including a triple salchow-triple loop. Lipinski and Kwan also did triple-triple jumps. Lipinski, Kwan and Slutskaya each had three first place votes but Kwan had the best number of seconds to win the free skating worth two-third of the mark. Fifth was Maria Butyskaya of Russia and Laetitia Hubert of France sixth. Krisztina Czako of Hungary was seventh with 15-year-old Julia Lautova of Austria eighth. American Nicole Bobek, two days after the death of her coach, Carlo Fassi, dropped from eighth to 13th with a poor free routine without any completed triple jumps. Still, the United States gets three women's spots in next year's Olympic field. Canadian Elvis Stojko won the men's title for the third time in the last four years, completing a quadruple-triple combination. American Todd Eldredge, last year's champion, was second with 17-year-old Alexei Yagudin of Russia third. Germans Mandy Woetzel and Ingo Steuer won the pairs with Russians couples in second and third. Russians took the top two positions in the ice dance with Oksana Gritschuk and Yevgeny Platov winning the world title for the fourth consecutive time. Angelika Krylova and Oleg Ovsiannikov were second again. | ALSO SEE ABC Sports looks back at the last three Women's World Championships Elvis Stojko wins men's title at 1997 world championships AUDIO/VIDEO  Tara Lipinski became the youngest World Champion in 1997 at age 14 (Courtesy: ABC Sports)RealVideo: 56.6 | |||||
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