Olympic Village Insider: Kristi Yamaguchi Spills the Truth
We know you know exactly where the 1998 Olympic gold medalist is—calling all the figure-skating action at the ongoing 2022 Beijing Olympics alongside broadcasting partner Johnny Weir, the pair of them joining the NBC Sports family in 2013.
“It’s like a long-lost soul mate that I met late in life,” she told GQ of Weir in 2018. “I can’t imagine my life without him.”
Lipinski became the youngest-ever world champion at 14 in 1997 before beating all comers at the Nagano Olympics at 15, also the youngest-ever figure skater to win Olympic gold. (She also bested her U.S. teammate and expected frontrunner Michelle Kwan, who finished second.)
“To go out and skate the way that I did, which was the way that I trained, that’s how every skater hopes to perform,” she recalled to E! News ahead of the Beijing Games. “I remember my legs shaking as they called my name and that had never happened before. I thought, ‘Oh, what do I do now? I need them!’ But to then be able to skate the way that I did, I’ll always remember not so much winning, but the moment the music ended and I was running across the ice, just the relief that I felt, the joy that I felt to skate well and have a good showing, but do it in front of millions of people at an Olympic Games.”
She met her future husband, producer Todd Kapostasy, when she presented an award to him at the Sports Emmys in 2015, and they tied the knot two years later. They teamed up to produce the 2022 Peacock documentary Meddling, about the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics scoring scandal that resulted in two sets of gold medals being handed out in pairs skating.
“Skating has definitely made its mark when it comes to scandals,” Lipinski told E!. “Obviously Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, and then the 2002 judging scandal. Hopefully that’s in our past.”