Beyond Nagaro
When Tara returned from Japan, Tara took some time and considered all the things that she accomplished. Yougest ever Olympic Festival Champion, National Champion, World Champions, the only female skater to successfully defend a Champion Series Final Gold, and the youngest ever gold medalist in ANY SPORT in the history of the Olympic Winter Games. When Tara was 15, she had seen it all and conquered it all. Tara also also considered her parents, who had sacrificed so much to allow her to folllow her dream. On April 7, 1998, during an appearance on NBC's Today Show, Tara officially ended her skating career and entered the ranks of Professional Skating.
New World, New Goals
Tara's first foray into Professional skating was a competition - The Skate TV Championships. Skate TV a coll, more fun kind of competion, featuring celebrity judges and an MTV centric thme. In this Tara took gold. Tara continued participating in Professional competitions, winning 1st place at the Jefferson Pilot Championships 1st in the Ladies division at Ice Wars later in 1998, and made another record during the last months of 1998, becoming the youngest ever to win the Ladies' World Professional Championship Gold. Tara won gold after gold after gold. In fact, Tara has never been defeated in individual competition since turning professional. Tara has also shawn talent in acting, having several roles in Prime-time dramsas, a starring role in the FOX-TV movie Ice angel, a starring role in Nickelodeon's "Are you afraid of the dark?", a role on The Young & Restless, her first theatrical film, playing opposite Cameron Diz, in Vanilla Sky, and the newest one that will come out sometime in 2002, The Metro Chase.
Today's Tara
Today, Tara is as busy as always. Even though Tara was forced to forget the competitions in 2000 because of surgery to repair a torn labrum and remove scar tissue from her hip, Tara still paid visits to over 60 cities in her role as a headliner for the third straight year in Target's Stars On Ice Tour. Tara had to fight pain and several incorrect diagnoses of her hip to compete and tour, (her hip was originally injured in 1997) and she was not about to let the repair stop her than the injury itself did! If you saw Stars On Ice Broadcast on TV, you would of sawn Tara skating a mere seven weeks after going though surgerty to repair her hip! "Fighter" is a word that describes Tara. She acted during 2001 summer in Paris filming The Metro Chase. Wherever Tara goes you can tell that she is having FUN and ENJOYING ever minute of her life. |
