TONYA’S ON THIN ICE
THE FORMER ATHLETE ADMITS SHE KNEW HER RIVAL WOULD BE ATTACKED
It was the scandal that shook the sporting world – a young, glamorous figure skater at her peak involved in a macabre plot to attack another.
Until last week, disgraced athlete Tonya Harding has always maintained she knew nothing of a plan to injure her teammate Nancy Kerrigan ahead of the 1994 Winter Olympics in order to ensure her own place on the US squad.
But in a revealing TV interview, Tonya – who is the subject of the upcoming film I, Tonya, starring Australian actress Margot Robbie – finally admits she “knew something was up”, and that it was possible her ex-husband
Jeff Gillooly and two of his friends would attempt to break Nancy’s leg so she was unable to compete in Olympic try-outs.
“I did... overhear them talking about stuff where, ‘Well, maybe we should take somebody out to make sure she gets on the team,’” says Tonya (47), who is now a mum-of-one and is married to her third husband. “I go, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’”
Interest in the saga has peaked in the lead-up to
I, Tonya’s release, which attempts to explain Tonya’s fraught upbringing and circumstances. As well as her doomed marriage to Jeff – an abusive man she believed was going to kill her “many times”
– it portrays her relationship with her domineering mother.
“My skating was great, but my life was a shambles,” Tonya says, adding she feels she was a “pawn” in the attack, which was planned by Jeff and carried out by an associate, Shane Stant.
“I’m always the bad person and I never understood that,” she tells. “I get angry. Nobody wanted to ever believe me.”
The attack itself failed to have the desired impact, with Nancy recovering in time to compete at the Olympics, where she won a silver medal. Tonya finished eighth in the competition and was then banned from all forms of the sport for life.