Before the Olympics, Nancy Kerrigan needed an orthopedist. Now she’s got spin doctors repairing her freshly hobbled image. The backlash began at the medal ceremony in Lillehammer, where a CBS mike caught the toothy ice maiden complaining that gold medalist Baiul was holding things up by needlessly applying makeup. “Oh, come on,” Nancy said. “So she’s going to get out here and cry again.” Then there was her ungracious assessment of the event’s judging: “I was flawless … Oksana wasn’t clean. But it’s out of my hands.” The topper came last week when she blew off the closing Olympic ceremonies to attend a Disney World parade, only to have another open mike snag her seemingly dissing the festivities. “This is so corny, this is so dumb,” she griped. “I hate it. This is the most corny thing I’ve ever done.” Nancy explained in a handler-issued statement that she was referring merely to her mom’s insistence that she wear her silver medal. She feared it would “look like bragging.” The actual parade was great, she said. “Riding down Main Street with Mickey Mouse what could be better than that?” Gee willikers, who knows?
It’s certainly nicer than the litany of woes faced by Tonya Harding. Back home without so much as a cardboard medal; facing a U.S. Figure Skating Association disciplinary hearing this week, and the target now of a federal criminal probe, Harding was apparently assaulted last Thursday night in what police think may have been a premeditated attack. Harding told cops she was set upon by a lone skater-hater as she strolled through a wooded park in Beaverton, Ore., to retrieve her pickup truck. Tonya was able to flee, searing off her assailant with an alarm she carried, though not before suffering minor scrapes, bruises and a sprained wrist in the attack. Police have no leads, but you can bet they’ll want Lo know where Goofy was that night.
