Tara Lipinski won an Olympic gold medal as a teenager and spent the following decades building one of the most trusted broadcasting partnerships in figure skating, a résumé that made her Season 4 run on The Traitors feel like a genuine departure from her usual on-camera role.
Long before she was analyzing other skaters’ programs, Lipinski was the one landing the jumps.
Olympic Gold at 15
Lipinski won the gold medal in women’s figure skating at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, becoming one of the youngest Olympic figure skating champions in history. That victory made her a household name well before she ever transitioned to broadcasting.
Kismet With Johnny Weir
Lipinski moved into a broadcasting career with NBC, where she was paired with fellow figure skater Johnny Weir starting with the 2014 Sochi Olympics. She’s described their on-air chemistry as “kismet,” and the two have remained NBC’s signature figure skating commentary team across multiple Olympic cycles since.
A Quiet Game That Ran Out of Time
Going into Season 4, Lipinski and Weir made a deliberate choice to downplay their real friendship on camera, treating each other more like acquaintances than the well-known broadcasting duo they actually are, a strategic decision meant to throw other players off. Lipinski played a largely quiet Faithful game, and by the time she correctly identified who the real Traitors were, it was too late to act on it effectively. In the season’s final stretch, she targeted Eric Nam and tried to convince Maura Higgins that Rob Rausch was the mastermind behind the Traitors’ remaining moves. Higgins didn’t budge, siding with Rausch and Nam instead, and the group banished Weir first, with Lipinski banished shortly after.
Life Now
Both Lipinski and Weir were notably absent from the Season 4 reunion special, a detail that stood out given how central their broadcasting partnership has otherwise been to their public profiles. Lipinski has continued her NBC skating commentary work since, a career built on reading performances correctly, even when her own Traitors read came just a little too late.