No words were needed, though, to hype the drama. For the first time in six weeks since the attack on Kerrigan at the U.S. national championships – the two stars of the greatest melodrama in the annals of American sport were on the same stage again. Proof of the magnitude of the confrontation was the presence of Chicago White Sox co-owner Eddie Einhorn, who could have stayed in far warmer climes and watched the world’s most celebrated athlete, Michael Jordan, try to make his baseball team. “There are only two places to be in the world,” Einhorn said, “here and in Sarasota [where the Sox train].” Jordan, presumably, will still be working out a week from now; by then Tonya and Nancy will have returned home.
Not that the circus will ever end. There are so many players with stakes in keeping it alive, The media love this: usually level-headed New York Newsday couldn’t wait for Tonya and Nancy to appear together, so it made a digital composite – a fake photo – and ran it on page one. Tonya’s mother, La Vona Golden, tried to prolong her 15 minutes of fame by doing a talk show, proclaiming her love for her estranged daughter, then fainting.
With the ladies’ competition slated to begin Wednesday night, Kerrigan and Harding didn’t have time for many more sideshows. “They’re here to skate and that’s what happened,” said Kerrigan’s agent, Jerry Solomon, after one practice. “It bodes well for the next week.” There hasn’t been a whole lot of well-boding since what has become known in figure-skating circles as the whack heard round the world. Last week Kerrigan finally had to speak to her rival, whose ex-husband has confessed to the crime and accused Harding of helping orchestrate the plot. That meeting occurred before they skated together and was uneventful. Shortly after Harding showed up in the athletes’ village, where she and Kerrigan live on separate floors of the same dorm, the two women exchanged civilities – “howzit going?” falls something short of pleasantries – as they readied to take opposite flanks in the team picture. The encounter had all the warmth and spontaneity of the Paris peace talks. But at least it “broke the ice”; it must have, because at least three U.S. officials used those very words.
As for “howzit going?” well, honestly, not too bad for either of them. This week both will get to pursue their Olympic dreams – Nancy with her dazzling smile, elegant costumes and on-ice artistry, Tonya with her fiery spirit and powerful leaps. When Kerrigan and Harding were first linked by this bizarre crime, much was made of their common working-class backgrounds and their economic struggles to compete in a pricey sport. Now they were reunited in Norway as young women whose financial fortunes are improving. Kerrigan had a potential million-dollar deal with Disney and others that will have her skating, shilling and even acting. Harding flew into Norway with the folks from “Inside Edition,” who had already anted up a reported $600,000 for every breathless moment of her story.
But nothing matched The Sun. The British tabloid printed four old pictures of Tonya wearing a topless bridal gown – and wiggling her breasts for the camera – at a Halloween party. Its report: “Tonya loves to dance ‘round naked, flaunting a great body. . .” Harding’s response: “I am very upset and ashamed.”
Tonya by now seems remarkably unfazed by the media horde and anything it does. Upon arrival, she fed it a couple of friendly waves and brevities – “I feel great. I’m ready to skate. Thanks for coming. Bye.” Harding was even sweeter at her obligatory press conference two days later, where she sported a delicate cross dangling from her turtleneck. She praised Norway (“beautiful”), the skating arena (“absolutely beautiful”), the other athletes (“every competitor at the Olympic Games is wonderful”), Nancy (“I have a great deal of respect for Nancy”) and God (“God has helped me”). With the media in danger of sugar shock, she even had kind words for them. “I know the media’s just doing its job and I respect them,” she said. But not enough apparently to answer any questions about the Kerrigan case – except to say, “When everything is done, I think I can sit down and cry.”
Harding was a little more her normal self on the ice. She arrived at her first practice eight minutes late, then spent most of the 45-minute session talking to her coach, Diane Rawlinson, and puffing on an inhaler for her asthma. She did work on her signature jump, the triple axel, and batted .400 (two for five), which is sensational for baseball but not for figure skating. Tonya is the only American woman to have successfully performed a triple axel, and she likes to boast that it is her most consistent jump. Indeed, it is – she hasn’t landed one in competition in three years. But she plans to try it again this week as one of six triple jumps in her routine. And her medal hopes will likely rise or fall with the axel. (Kerrigan will do six triple jumps, too, but won’t attempt a triple axel.) At a later practice, Harding took a hard fall on the axel, aggravating a painful right ankle that, she says, has bothered her for months. The next afternoon, she stumbled through her routine and angrily stomped off the ice midway through the session.
Kerrigan’s team opted for pre-emptive strikes before Harding hit town, using a combination of trash talk and photo ops. Solomon dissed Harding’s growing fan club, which claims 1,500 members, saying, “Nancy gets that many letters each day.” And Kerrigan’s coach, Mary Scotvold, reminded reporters that for all Harding’s gold-medal pretensions, she enters the competition as an unranked skater who didn’t even qualify for last year’s world championships. “She’s got a lot of bravado,” she said, “for a girl who’s frankly got to come back from 1991.” The Kerrigan camp had already served notice that they weren’t interested in Tonya’s avowed wish to hug Nancy. “She’s never hugged her before, so why would she start now?” said Scotvold. (They rarely got close enough to hug, anyway, since Harding’s limited ice time ensured that the two avoided crossing paths.) Finally, despite Kerrigan’s aversion to the media, she plopped her smiling self down in the middle of the press section during the pairs competition, redirecting cameras her way.
Now comes the really hard part. After all the agonies to get to the Olympics – Nancy’s remarkable recovery, Tonya’s legal trials – they will take to the ice with the whole world watching. As if that weren’t pressure enough, other world-class competitors, such as Surya Bonaly of France and Oksana Baiul of Ukraine, have been free this month to prepare in a relatively attention-free environment. For either Kerrigan or Harding to achieve a fairy-tale ending, she’s going to have to write it on the ice herself.
Tonya and Nancy have declared their intentions. The question now is whether they can fulfill their routines on the ice. A second-by-second rundown:
0:00 Start 0:12 Triple flip 0:24 Triple-toe loop, Triple toe-loop combination 0:44 Triple loop 1:50 Triple Salchow, double-toe-loop combination 2:00 Flying camel, back-sit, back-scratch spins 2:35 Layback, back-camel, upright spins 3:15 Triple lutz 3:25 Spiral 3:45 Double axel 3:50 Stars 3:58 Arabian back-sit spin 4:05 Forward scratch spin
0:00 Start 0:32 Triple lutz 0:48 Triple axel 1:03 Triple flip 1:28 Layback spin 1:45 Forward outside spiral 2:18 Triple loop 2:33 Ena Baur 2:48 Double axel, triple-toe combination 3:18 Flying camel into back-sit spin 3:39 Triple Salchow 3:43 Death-drop spin 3:49 Combination spin
