Tonya Harding has a track record of some questionable and shady behavior.
Her involvement in the Nancy Kerrigan incident is one of the craziest stories in all of sports,
with the saga even getting its own movie. So let's really dive into the shady side of Tonya Harding.
Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed in the right knee by Shane Stant on January 6,
1994, after practicing for the U.S. National Championships at the Cobo Arena in Detroit,
Michigan. Kerrigan's landing knee was badly bruised, so she was unable to compete in the
event but was allowed on the Olympic team, and she won a silver medal in Lillehammer, Norway.
Kerrigan's saga is not infamous because of her triumph. It's infamous because the bumbling
perpetrators of the attack had connections to her biggest rival at the time — Tonya Harding.
We know that Stant and his getaway driver, Derek Smith, were hired by Harding's "bodyguard,"
Sean Eckhardt, and her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, to commit the crime,
according to ABC News. Harding has always denied her involvement in the attack,
but during a 1994 press conference, she admitted some culpability, saying -
"I had no prior knowledge of the planned assault on Nancy Kerrigan. I am responsible, however,
for failing to report things I learned about the assault when I returned home from Nationals."
Per The New York Times, Harding's failure to report details to the FBI led her to plead
guilty to the felony charge of hindering the prosecution. Her sentence included three years
of supervised probation, and she was ordered to set up a fund to benefit the Special Olympics.
Harding's troubles with the law did not end in the mid-'90s. As the Los Angeles Times
reported in 2000, she was arrested on a fourth degree domestic assault charge for allegedly
hitting her boyfriend, Darren Silver, in the face and "throwing a hubcap" at him.
Harding was released from custody an hour after her arrest and ordered to appear in
court. However, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that she was later convicted on the
charge and spent three days in jail. She was also put on two years of probation.
Years later, Harding explained to the University Of Oregon School of Law that she was only
ever the aggressor to defend herself in allegedly abusive situations, saying -
"I hate violence! I hate arguing and all that.
If people call me the aggressor — it is because I said, 'No, I am not going
to take it anymore!' 'Get off of me!' 'You can't treat me like this!' So, I hit back."
"We might get into a little uh, a little, a little brawl now and then
about what's- what's gonna go on and usually she wins, I mean I'll admit it to the world."
Harding did not explicitly reference her arrest for alleged domestic violence in the interview.
In April 2002, Harding was "cited for drunken driving" in Battle Ground, Washington,
when she crashed her pickup truck. Per the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Harding claimed that something
went wrong with her truck's power steering, but she reportedly failed both a sobriety and a
breath test. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer also reported that her blood-alcohol level was .16%,
which is two times' Washington's legal limit and high enough for her to face jail time.
Harding was also on probation at the time because of the aforementioned domestic violence charge,
which could have potentially increased the severity of her punishment,
since she was violating her probation by drinking alcohol at all.
On August 9, 2002, Harding was sentenced to 30 days in jail, which was reduced
to just 10 days under the condition that she took "12 hours of classes for troubled young adults."
Harding made brief comments after her sentencing, saying -
"I'm grateful to the judge for giving me this opportunity; I finally found out
what my problem is: It's alcohol. I'm glad it happened so no one gets hurt,
I don't get hurt and I'm making something right in my life for a change.”
Many people think Harding lied about having prior knowledge of the assault, and Nancy Kerrigan
told the Daily Mail that some of those people were FBI agents, saying in a 2013 interview -
"[The FBI] told me: 'We can't give you hard proof, but we do this for a living,
and we are convinced Harding knew.'"
Sandra Luckow, a childhood friend and the director of a 1986
film about Harding's first national competition said in "30 for 30:
The Price of Gold" that she tries to avoid discussing whether she thinks Harding
knew about the attack beforehand, because she wants to believe the best, but alleged -
"Of course she was involved."
Olympic silver medalist Paul Wylie said in the film that the
consequences Harding suffered for her role in the incident,
like being banned from the U.S. Figure Skating Association, were, quote, "deserved."
Meanwhile, Harding's ex-husband Jeff Gillolly,
who now goes by Jeff Stone, claimed to Deadspin in 2013 -
"Of course she [knew]. I think most people know that she did."
Harding sued the U.S. Olympic Committee to prevent them from holding a meeting to discuss
if she should be banned from representing the U.S. at the 1994 Olympics. At the competition
she allegedly ran into more trouble, claiming that her right skate laces were apparently broken.
However, many people inside the world of figure skating are somewhat skeptical,
saying that Harding had a history of problems with her skates
during competitions that were not going her way. Olympian Paul Wylie said -
"This was not the first time that Tonya had a mishap with her clothing
or her skates and there was a sense that nobody believed that Tonya's skate lace actually broke.
They believed that she was starting over because she made a mistake."
Audrey Williams was an Olympic figure skating judge in 1994
who shares Wylie's skepticism. Williams told Good Housekeeping that she was once a referee
at a Skate America event where Harding claimed her skate was messed up, but upon checking it
Williams didn't find anything wrong. She admitted that at the Olympics she wasn't close enough to
Harding to see if the lace was actually broken, but said she, quote, "didn't believe" that it was.
In 1994, Penthouse released a tape featuring Tonya Harding
and her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, and published stills from it in the magazine.
The video is called "Tonya and Jeff's Wedding Night" and has its own IMDb page. Now,
we're not shaming anyone for creating a sex tape. As the Chicago Tribune reported in 1994 -
"The sex is consensual, but the publication is not."
That same year, Harding's manager told UPI that her client opposed the sale of the tape, saying -
"She has been offered upwards of $600,000 to pose nude and she has totally rejected the idea."
However, many publications, including Deadspin, who spoke to Gillooly, have
since reported that it's confirmed that he and Harding split the profits from selling the tape.
In 1998, Fox aired "Breaking the Ice," a special featuring Tonya Harding
and Nancy Kerrigan speaking face-to-face for the first time since the scandal.
Harding did not take responsibility for the attack, instead offering Kerrigan an
apology that skirted around any personal culpability, saying -
"Nancy, I want to apologize again, for being in the wrong place
at the wrong time around the wrong people. If I would have known anything in the beginning,
I would have done anything I could to stop it. Anything."
We won't speculate on the sincerity of Harding's words,
but she does seem to be talking in a bit of a circle. Kerrigan confirmed to ABC News in 2017
that she's never received a, quote, "direct" apology from Harding, adding -
"Does it matter at this point?"
Lack of an apology aside, Tonya Harding sure does seem to love throwing shade at her former rival,
even in more recent years. In the 2014 ESPN film "The Price of Gold," she said -
"She was a great skater, I was a great skater, but of course, she was treated like this huge queen."
Harding did not get the endorsement deals that Kerrigan did, even before the scandal,
and quotes like that make her appear a bit bitter about it to this day.
At the Lillehammer Olympics, after Harding had admitted to hindering the prosecution,
she said that she tried to apologize to Kerrigan for the people she associated
with when they were practicing at the same rink, claiming -
"But she just blew it off like it was nothing. For her to treat me like that,
like I was nothing, like she was above me, I mean that's rude."
She also called Kerrigan a, quote, "crybaby who didn't win the gold," commenting on footage of
Kerrigan appearing frustrated that Oksana Baiul was delaying the medal ceremony to put on makeup.
It's no secret that Tonya Harding grew up in poverty. Her longtime coach,
Diane Schatz-Rawlinson, explained the extent of Harding's situation as early as 1986
in the documentary film, "Sharp Edges," saying -
"Skating, for Tonya, is her ticket out of the gutter. [She lives] in a terrible rental house,
no supervision at all, she has no direction, there's not much to do."
Schatz-Rawlinson added that she would pay for many of Harding's figure skating expenses
and sometimes her costumes were homemade.
For "The Price of Gold," Harding recalled a confrontation she had with a judge
who scolded her for wearing a bright pink dress she'd made herself to a competition, saying -
"I said, 'Well, you know what? If you can come up with $5000 for a costume for me,
then I won't have to make it. But until then, stay out of my face."
It seems as though Harding often blames the powers-that-be in her former sport for the
consequences of her behavior, feeling she didn't get true support from the
United States Figure Skating Association at the 1994 Olympics. Harding claimed they let her go
knowing she wouldn't, quote, "get the marks that she deserves"
The District Attorney in Multnomah County, Oregon said in "The Price of Gold" that there was, quote,
"strong evidence" that Tonya Harding participated in planning the attack on Nancy Kerrigan,
like the piece of paper found with Kerrigan's practice rink information on it, saying -
"We had the handwriting tested and it was identified as [Tonya's] handwriting."
In the same film, Harding makes the opposite claim, saying -
"They tested the handwriting and [it] was not mine."
Regardless of who you believe,
it was not strong enough evidence to convict her of anything more than hindering prosecution.
Harding has also made serious allegations against family members. In Lynda Prouse's biography,
"The Tonya Tapes," she claimed that her deceased half-brother, Chris Davidson, sexually assaulted
her. Harding's mother alleged that the incident was not as serious as Harding made it seem
and told Sports Illustrated her daughter had a, quote, "vivid imagination." Meanwhile, Harding's
ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, claimed to Deadspin that most people, quote, "laughed" at Harding's
allegation in "The Tonya Tapes" that he and two other men sexually assaulted her at gunpoint.
While it's admittedly often hard to find people close to Harding who will verify her
various allegations, we should point out that there's obviously nothing funny at all about
alleged rape and sexual assault, and we simply don't know the truth about any of these claims.
Tonya Harding did not exactly go on to live a quiet life contemplating her consequences after
she was banned from figure skating in 1994. She made her singing debut in 1995 in a band called
The Golden Blades and tried to perform at a concert fundraiser, but was booed throughout
the performance, according to the Deseret News. In the early 2000s, she returned to the sports
world and tried her hand as a professional boxer, but that only lasted for six matches.
Harding also participated in "Dancing With the Stars," and seems eager to tell her story
in many documentaries. According to The New York Times, she even sold her life story rights to "I,
Tonya" writer Steven Rogers for just $1,500, though it's unclear how much money she made after
the film's success. And hey, she has a right to make money — but these career moves, which seem to
rely on her infamous place in sports history for her monetary advantage, haven't gone by without
criticism. For example, a History piece covering the attack against Nancy Kerrigan claimed that the
former figure skater, quote, "wasn't above trying to exploit the crime and her notoriety herself."
If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse,
you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233.
You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault,
help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network
website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).