As an 8 year old boy growing up in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains with an affinity for NASCAR, pro-wrestling, football, and unabashedly walking into grocery stores shirtless (along with my dad who was also shirtless), it might surprise folks to learn that I was also a big figure skating fan. This can be attributed to my mother who would occasionally watch figure skating competitions whenever they were on television and with only one cable box in the house, I was often relegated to watching what she watched. As has been established in prior entries, if my mom did watch something on TV, I became a fan of it: NASCAR, true crime, fake crime (Murder She Wrote, Matlock), and figure skating.

I remember not liking it at first because I didn’t get it. How can dancing around on ice be competitive? The music they listen to sucks, their outfits look ridiculous, and all they do is spin! “Look at me! I can spin, too!” (I then perform two full turns, stumble sideways into the living room bookshelf and unleash an avalanche of my mom’s true crime book collection onto the floor.) Ok. I admit that it’s hard to do, but is it really fun to watch? “Why can’t we watch Matlock instead, mom? Please!”

My crush when I was 8/9. (Other than Jessica Fletcher.)

[30 minutes later]

“Ok, so far, I think Brian Boitano and Kurt Browning are my favorites,” carefully not mentioning any of the female skaters I had a major crush on like Kristi Yamaguchi and Germany’s Katerina Wiit. I think my mom knew I had eyes for them though. I was suspiciously quiet while they did their routines.

One of my mom's favorite skaters was Rudy Galindo, Yamaguchi’s pair skating partner, and Canadian whose older brother eventually died of AIDS. These were the two facts my mom would mention anytime Rudy hit the ice. “You know, he’s from Canada and he has an older brother with AIDS.”

Thanks mom, I’m eight.

Rudy would come out as gay and retire in 1996. In 2000 he announced that he was HIV positive. My mom cried after both announcements. She “knew” he was gay but hated to see him retire and announce his illness. He’s still around in 2022, living out his 52nd year on earth in San Jose, CA. Good for him! Mom would be happy about this.

Rudy was fun to watch skate and mom always looked on nervously, sometimes letting out a disappointed “Oh, Rudy!” whenever she spotted a mistake.

A few years later, I can’t remember when exactly, but we drove two hours to watch Disney’s Stars on Ice that featured many of the well known figure skaters of the time like Yamaguchi and Scott Hamilton, another favorite. So, when I say we were “fans”, I really mean it.

My mom and I watched a lot of figure skating together, not just what aired from the Winter Olympics in February of 1994 in Lillehammer, Norway. We knew who all of the major contenders were, including Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding, before Harding and her ex-husband presumably conspired to wipe Nancy out with a dose of back alley street medicine.

January 6 is a day that continues to pile on infamy, and in 1994 America experienced the first major news story to become synonymous with that unsuspecting date. On that afternoon, Nancy Kerrigan, a top figure skater expected to bring home a medal in Lillehammer the next month, was practicing for the US Championships on an ice rink inside Cobo Arena in downtown Detroit. A camera crew was on hand to record the session and footage shows her leave the ice rink, walk through a curtain, and down a hallway out of view before the camera cuts out.

It was at that moment her attacker made a move. Shane Stant was a for-hire “hitman” of sorts in that he was going to be paid to whack Kerrigan with a telescopic baton and take her out of contention. Her rival, Tonya Harding, was unsurprisingly at the center of it all. She had apparently orchestrated the attack (although she still pleads ignorance to this day) along with Jeff Gillooly, her ex-husband. At the time, she still referred to him as her husband for some reason. Tonya wanted to win the US Championships in Detroit that month and be the best American at the Olympics the next month. She didn’t want to have to deal with aggravating things like honorably and fairly defeating her stiffest competition, Nancy Kerrigan, on the ice.

Stant approached Kerrigan when she was alone, extended the baton, and struck her lower right thigh and walked away. He escaped the arena by smashing through a locked glass door like the Hulk and was then driven away by his accomplice, Derrick Smith. The camera crew eventually caught up to Kerrigan and started recording again when they found her on the ground crying. Nancy was wailing loudly over her horrific surprise injury. Here, Nancy screams, “Why? Why? Why?” Her dreams of winning the US Championships and being a force in next month’s Olympics were now in severe jeopardy. Why? Indeed.

If memes existed in 1994, they would have unfortunately been aimed toward Nancy’s dramatic cries of confusion and pain. She was clowned by everyone for having an emotional meltdown despite having survived a ruthless attack on her physical body, sense of security, and her hopes, dreams, and career.

The thing is, no one really knew that Tonya Harding or her cohorts were the masterminds behind the attack at this point and a lot of people found it fishy that Nancy was suddenly and surprisingly injured during the brief time the camera crew had stopped filming. Maybe she did this to herself and had it set up to either frame another skater or to have an excuse for not winning the US Championship or Olympics. After all, these athletes are under a lot of pressure to represent their countries on the world stage. It would be understandable if that pressure got to her and she sabotaged her own career to preserve her dignity in some way.

Jeff “My Last Name Sounds Super Made Up” Gillooly

But that wasn’t the case, and we should all be embarrassed for interpreting it that way. It didn’t take long to figure out who would benefit the most from Kerrigan being out of the way. Insert Portland, Oregon’s own Tonya Harding (now known as Tonya Price), who went on to win the US Championship after Kerrigan went down. Investigators discovered that there was a connection between Harding’s ex-yet-kind-of-still husband, Jeff Gillooly, and the attackers. That alone would incriminate Harding, since how could this be organized without her knowledge?

That said, all these years later, Harding has maintained she did not concoct the plan on her own and did not wish for it to happen. When she found out about the plan, she said she wished to contact the FBI, but was threatened not to by her ex-husband and his associates. Gillooly admitted to hatching the plot on his own and talking Tonya into it, but asserts that she was “into it” and was not coerced into complying. We may never know how involved in the plot Tonya was.

In 2014, Nancy Kerrigan forgave her once-upon-ice nemesis and said she had moved on. Harding was banned from figure skating competitions in June of 1994, four months after she competed against Kerrigan in the Winter Olympics. Harding continued to have a career in spotlight adjacent ways, like having a brief boxing career. On live television in 2003, she fought Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct when they crossed paths during the years he was a governor there.

Harding and Gillooly even benefited from having Penthouse market a sex tape of them that released in 1994, only one month after she was banned for life from skating. Harding took full advantage of the murky limelight the attack on Kerrigan created, even finishing 3rd on season 26 of Dancing with the Stars nearly two decades later. Kerrigan led a quieter life after skating although she also competed on Dancing with the Stars in season 24 and did not place.

Kerrigan had to withdraw from the US Championships in January 1994 due to the injuries sustained from the attack. In years prior, she had ascended to the top of that competition, finishing 4th in 1990, winning bronze in 1991, silver in 1992, and gold in 1993. She would likely have won gold again that year if not for the senseless violence. In a feat of defiance, Nancy pulled through the Olympics a month later and won silver while Ukraine’s Oksana Baiul took home gold. Tonya Harding, who was still allowed to compete despite the allegations surrounding her, finished 8th.

The drama wasn’t over yet, however. Kerrigan was in first place and ended up losing to Baiul in a controversial 5-4 decision. It took organizers over twenty minutes to find a copy of Ukraine’s national anthem to play during the awards ceremony. However, people close to Kerrigan told her the delay was because Baiul cried her make-up off and was having it retouched. This led to Kerrigan saying on camera, “Oh, come on. So she's going to get out here and cry again. What's the difference?" This led to a shift in the way people saw Kerrigan and the way she was portrayed by the media, yet again.

Pop Culture had some fun with this story in the end. Later that same year, Weird Al Yankovic included a verse about the ordeal in his “Headline News” song, a parody of “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” by the Crash Test Dummies.

Once there was this girl who
Swore that one day she would be a figure skating champion
And when she finally made it
She saw some other girl who was better
And so she hired some guy to
Club her in the knee cap
[thwacking , screams]
They got paid for their sound bytes
And sold their TV movie rights

My memory of the breaking news, the video of Nancy, and the olympic figure skating event that year are nearly crystal clear. I remember that even though figure skating was more of my mom’s thing, and therefore something she could chat with me about, my dad was also invested in the story. He gave both women nicknames that I thought were funny at the time but not so great in hindsight, “Nancy Cry-again” and “Tonya Tarding.” I remember at one point taking Tonya Harding’s side, thinking this Nancy character was full of shit. I remember changing my tune when hearing all the details and cheering on Nancy in the finals and happily watching her stand atop the podium to collect her silver and wondering if she would have won gold without her setback.

The ice-dust eventually settled for most who took interest in the story at the time but my mom and I continued to follow the sport the way we always had. For a little while, at least.

Day 11: Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding

Day 15: Finally February 1994, Olympics, Worms, and Virtual Reality

Day 7: Hey, O.J.! Where ya going?