The fall and rise of Olympic ice skater Tonya Harding who tangled with America’s Sweetheart
Preparing to face the biggest challenge of her career, one thing stood in the way of professional figure skater Tonya Harding's Olympic hopes - her own team-mate Nancy Kerrigan
SHE became one of the world’s most hated sports stars, accused of ordering a brutal attack on her Olympic skating rival.
Even harder to stomach was that Tonya Harding’s alleged target was her US team-mate, Nancy Kerrigan.
More than two decades on, Tonya is still reluctant to discuss the attack that brought her more fame than figure-skating ever could — despite currently walking the red carpet at various premieres of the Oscar-tipped biopic of her story.
She has even demanded journalists agree a contract not to ask her “about the past” or risk being fined £18,000.
The movie I, Tonya — which stars Margot Robbie as the shamed skater — throws fresh light on the affair by basing the script on interviews with Tonya and her ex-husband.
In January 1994, Nancy was in Detroit, preparing for the Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway, when she was struck with a baton on the back of her right thigh.
Despite a camera crew following her training, the attack was not filmed but Nancy was heard off-screen screaming, “Why, why, why?” and later seen clutching her knee.
It was just seven weeks until the Olympics’ opening ceremony.
Within a fortnight, it emerged a hitman hired by Tonya’s live-in ex-husband and manager, Jeff Gillooly, had carried out the attack in a bid to clear Tonya’s path to glory.
Tonya denied any involvement and claimed she only realised later that Gillooly had planned it.
However, failing to immediately tell police that led to a charge of conspiring to hinder the prosecution — which she admitted to in court in 1994.
Along with a fine, probation and community service, Tonya was banned from the sport for life.
But in the film, the 1991 world silver medallist is shown seemingly aware Gillooly was up to something dodgy and telling him not to do anything.
Nancy’s mum insists Tonya is still not telling the whole truth about her involvement.
Brenda Kerrigan, from Boston, told The Sun: “I heard that after 24 years Tonya has all of a sudden decided, ‘Oh, I think I remember they talked about it.’
“Maybe in 24 more years she’ll tell the whole truth. She should have admitted it a long time ago.”
Many people suspect Tonya knew more.
Brenda said that after Nancy was hurt “it took people only five minutes to say, ‘Tonya had something to do with that’”.
When Good Morning Britain presenter Piers Morgan pressed Tonya, 47, on the issue last month, she ended their interview.
The plot to remove her nearest rival was ill conceived from the start.
After reuniting with her mentally and physically abusive ex Gillooly in order to present the image of a happy couple for the prim skating world, he convinced best pal Shawn Eckardt to end Nancy’s Olympic dream.
Eckardt claimed to be a spy with underworld connections, despite still living with his parents.
He paid desperate drifter Shane Stant £4,700 to kneecap Nancy.
Clueless Stant first went to the wrong skating arena then had no plan for escape when he did eventually find the right one. He ended up crashing through a locked glass door to get outside to the getaway car.
But, having failed to disguise his face, he later handed himself into police and they figured out the link to Gillooly.
Eckardt, Stant and Gillooly, along with driver Derrick Smith were jailed over the attack.
Even now Brenda does not want to discuss the moment her daughter was attacked.
Nancy feared she would be left unable to qualify for the Games but her team-mates insisted that she take one of their spots when she made a miraculous recovery.
Nancy, 48, who had once been Tonya’s friend and room-mate, threw herself into intensive training. She practised by doing complete back-to-back double run-throughs of her routines — and won a silver.
Tonya finished eighth following a tearful routine where one of her laces broke. Brenda, 78, whose welder husband Daniel worked three jobs to support his daughter’s skating dreams, said: “Nancy should have had the gold. If you watch the competition and the girl who did get gold, you’ll think, ‘How did that happen?’ ”
While Gillooly has since changed his name to Jeff Stone in a bid to escape the stigma, Tonya, now a painter and decking fitter, has been enjoying her renewed fame.
She described the film as “magnificent” and her former agent Michael Rosenberg told The Sun: “She has been paid a very healthy sum for the rights to her life story and is not short of cash right now.”
It makes a change from the past two decades where she even turned to boxing in order to pay the rent.
Actress Margot, 27, has been nominated for an Oscar for her sympathetic turn as the skater.
The film reveals how the skating prodigy was raised on a trailer park by her success-obsessed mum LaVona Golden. One scene shows LaVona throwing a knife into a young Tonya’s arm and pushing her to the limits.
Tonya claimed she was treated as an outsider in the sport because she was a “redneck”. In another scene, we see a raging Gillooly shoot at her.
Nancy’s mum, though, will not be watching the film and does not see Tonya as the victim of this tale.
She said: “It’s quite disgusting that they put her up like she’s some sort of hero, when she committed a crime.”
Now on her third marriage, Tonya lives near Portland in Oregon, not far from Gillooly and her mum.
But she no longer speaks to either of them and both deny being so violent towards her.
Gillooly, who once sold a sex tape of him and Tonya, said in 2013 he had no regrets about the events of 1994 apart from the damage it did to Tonya’s skating career. He said: “She’ll be remembered for what I talked her into doing.”
Tonya was the first US female skater to land a triple axel in competition — a jump with three-and-a-half rotations — and was national champ.
It is here that Brenda expresses sympathy for ice-skating’s bad girl, saying: “It’s sad on Tonya’s part because she really did have a lot of talent. She would have had a much better chance if she didn’t do any of that stuff, if she had just stuck with her own talent.”
Eckardt died in 2007 and Stant, 46, now runs a cannabis shop in California, where the drug is legal. In a recent interview, he said he was “in an insane place” at the time of the attack.
As for Nancy, she suffered eating disorders following the Lillehammer Games, endured several miscarriages and her devoted father died during a struggle with her brother over a phone in 2010.
She is married to her agent Jerry Solomon and they have three children. Like Tonya, Nancy has not shied away from the limelight recently.
Last year she finished sixth on the US Strictly equivalent, Dancing With The Stars, and has earned millions from advertising deals.
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But for Wolf Of Wall Street beauty Margot, who also produced I, Tonya, what matters is that viewers buy into her version of Tonya’s story — even if that means not necessarily getting to the whole truth.
She said: “People tell themselves something happened in a certain way so that they can live with themselves. I cared so much more about her upbringing and her life, and in my opinion, how unfairly she was treated.
“No matter what you believe happened, I don’t think she deserved the punishment she got.”
- I, Tonya (15) is out in selected cinemas on Friday and opens nationwide from February 23.