Thin Ice

by Frank Coffey

  For example, when Tonya was 14 she began experimenting with the move that would one day become her trademark: the triple Axel. It was an impossible move, a three-and-a-half revolution jump that even the best women in the world dared not attempt in competition. Tonya Harding fooled around with it in practice, landing awkwardly and occasionally falling, and knowing all the time that she would one day execute the impossible in front of an audience, in front of judges. She would make history.

  “Most girls needed to be talked into doing some of the hard things,” Antje Spethmann told The Oregonian. “Not Tonya. She’d try anything. She was fearless. The falls never bothered her.”

  “According to top skaters from Katarina Witt to Tai Babilonia, Tonya might be the most talented female skater who ever lived,” her former agent, Michael Rosenberg, once told The San Francisco Examiner. “But it’s a talent that needs to be refined and harnessed.”

  Harnessed is a good word, implying as it does that Tonya is something of a free spirit. Her spirit, from the very beginning, matched her athletic ability. And not merely her spirit, but her self-discipline, too. How rare in a child or teenager–or even in an adult–is the ability and drive to make the most of one’s God-given talents? Tonya had that, at least when she was younger.

  “She has this burning desire inside,” 52-year-old David Webber of Portland told Sports Illustrated. “Her mother told me she never had to wake Tonya up to go to practice. That was all Tonya’s doing.”

  Like Rawlinson, and a few others along the way, Webber befriended and cared for Tonya. They met in 1985, when he was the manager of a fast-food restaurant in the Portland area. In 1992, E. M. Swift wrote in Sports Illustrated that Harding had developed such a liking for Webber that she came to think of his family as her own. David was “Dad” and David’s wife, Ruth, was “Mom.” The three Webber children–Brent, Mark and Stephanie–became her surrogate siblings.

  “If I ever had a family, they’re it,” Harding said. “They basically adopted me into their family. You don’t need papers to be adopted into a family.”

  “She sort of adopted us,” Ruth Webber said. “And we don’t mind at all that she calls us Mom and Dad. Not at all. I don’t think Tonya got a lot of love as a child growing up.”

  Harding herself has never been especially fond of airing the details of her private life, but interviews with her and with observers close to the situation present a picture of a child who cared immensely for her father, but not so much for her mother. And as she grew into adolescence, the anger and hurt became something closer to rage.

  “Tonya’s family loves her dearly,” Rawlinson told Sandra Lukow. “Her mother just doesn’t really understand how to get the best out of Tonya. She tends to put her down … to get her to perform. Her father loves her and Tonya would do anything for her father.”

  Tonya still adored Al, the man who had taught her how to hunt and fish and tune up a car. Mom was a different story. By the mid-80s, theirs had become an acrimonious relationship. They fought bitterly and often and over just about anything. At the same time, the Harding household was falling apart. Al’s back problems kept him out of work for months at a time and LaVona was trying to work extra hours as a waitress. Tonya’s aggressive and stubborn personality only added to the volatile mix.

  Skating remained her salvation. It was her release, spiritual and physical.

  “Her skating has really been her foundation in life,” Rawlinson told the Portland Oregonian. “It’s the only thing that has remained constant.”

  Tonya developed asthma when she was eight, and the condition– compounded by stress–afflicts her to this day. Even as her domestic life crumbled, Tonya climbed through the amateur ranks, progressing steadily each year until, in 1984, she earned a chance to compete in the junior nationals. There, as a 13-year-old, she finished sixth. She followed that with a fifth the following year at the Olympic Festival and a second at Skate America in 1986.

  To the public, which was just starting to become familiar with Harding, she was little more than another promising young figure skater; one with unique ability, yes, but not one with such an unusual background. Few people understood the pain of her life away from the ice. They hadn’t a clue. And for a long time, Tonya had no real desire to share that pain with anyone.

  She did, however, share it with Sandra Lukow, whose Yale University videotape was snatched from the closet in the weeks after the Kerrigan attack, when the feeding frenzy for information on Tonya Harding was at its peak. Harding was just 15 when the tape was made, and if at times she seemed precisely that age, at other moments during the piece she seemed much older. At still other moments, she seemed much younger. She seemed at once confused and self-assured. Mostly, though, she seemed sad.

  “Well, I’m really different from my brothers and sisters because my brother, he used to steal things and he still does,” Harding said at one point, in an effort to describe herself. “He’s like my mom. He doesn’t have a lot of money, and he goes out and gets drunk and then he gets in fights and stuff. And, I don’t do that.”

  The brother was actually a half-brother. His name was Chris Davison, and he and Tonya were not exactly the best of friends. One of the more tumultuous incidents in Harding’s life, in fact, involved Davison.

  This was in 1986, the same year in which Harding was interviewed by Sandra Lukow. As she later described it to Sports Illustrated, Harding was home getting ready for her first date with the man who would become her husband, Jeff Gillooly. Davison, 26 at the time, stormed into the house. He was drunk. When he found out Al and LaVona weren’t home, he walked up to Tonya and attempted to kiss her. According to Tonya, it was the second time she had been forced to rebuff his advances. The first time, she stopped him with a slap to the face. This time it would not be so easy.

  She grabbed a curling iron, then threatened to burn him with it if he did not go away and leave her alone. Davison kept coming, and Harding responded in the only way she could: she burned him on the neck. Frightened for her life, Tonya ran upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom. Davison tracked her down, demanded that she open the door immediately. She refused, and so he broke down the door and stumbled inside. Another struggle ensued and Tonya was eventually able to break free and get to a telephone. Quickly, she dialed 911. By this time, Davison was in the room, watching her, listening.

  “He told me, ‘If you say something’s wrong, I’ll kill you,’ ” Harding said. “So when the operator asked me if everything was OK, I said yes. But she must have known that something was wrong because she called right back and asked, ‘Are you sure everything’s OK there? It’s not, is it?’ I just said, ‘Yup.’ ”

  The operator was right, of course. Everything was not all right. When Tonya hung up the phone, Davison approached her again, threatened her again, and this time she hit him with a hockey stick. Then she ran down the stairs, out of the house and across the street to a friend’s. There, she dialed 911 again. This time she did not lie. This time she told them what was wrong. She asked for help.

  While she waited, Davison left in his car. After seeing him drive away, Tonya walked back across the street to her house. She went inside and locked every door and window.

  Then she waited.

  And waited.

  How much time passed? It felt like hours. She couldn’t understand why no one would help her. Maybe they didn’t believe her. Was that it? Did they think she was lying?

  A car pulled up. Tonya looked out the window. She couldn’t believe her eyes. There, on the front lawn, was her half-brother. Davison stood and stared at her. He pointed and shook his fist, screamed at her.

  “I’m gonna get you!”

  Then she heard a knock at the door. No, not a knock, really. Something more. A pounding, like someone trying to break in. They hammered at the door, over and over. They were trying to break it down, she was sure of it. She was terrified. She couldn’t think straight.

  And then she listened. She listened carefully for a
moment, long enough to understand what was being said, and finally she realized it wasn’t Davison after all. Well, yes, it was, but he wasn’t alone. He had an escort.

  Tonya opened the door and there, in handcuffs, was her half-brother. On each arm was a uniformed officer.

  They made sure that she was all right, then took Davison to jail to let him sleep it off.

  “That night I tried to tell my mom and dad what happened,” Harding said. “My dad didn’t want to believe it, and my mother slapped me and told me to get in my room. To this day she doesn’t believe me.”

  She isn’t the only one. Over the years more than a few people have suggested that Tonya Harding suffers from an overactive imagination. One of those people is Tonya’s stepfather, James Golden, who, in a story that appeared in Newsweek, said that Tonya frequently embellished–and sometimes just invented–some of the bizarre events that dot her résumé. In general, he did not have many kind words for his stepdaughter.

  “She was very selfish,” said Golden, who, at the time of the Kerrigan attack, was separated from LaVona and about to become her sixth ex-husband. “Very surly.”

  Publicly, Tonya’s mother, LaVona, has had precious little to say about her daughter in recent years. Two years ago, however, in that same Sports Illustrated story (a largely sympathetic pre-Olympic portrait, incidentally, although Harding reportedly didn’t view it that way), LaVona responded to Tonya’s accusations about her half-brother.

  “He did have a problem with drinking,” LaVona said. “I wouldn’t put it past Chris to try and get a kiss. Tonya has a vivid imagination. She tends to tell tall tales.”

  When told of her mother’s defense of Davison, Tonya stated, simply and coldly, that Davison later said to her, “If I ever catch you alone, you won’t be around anymore.”

  He never did catch her alone again. Three years later, in Portland, Davison was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver. Harding declined to attend the funeral.

  “I know it sounds terrible,” she said. “My mom tried to make me, but I wouldn’t.”

  Mother and daughter did not get along then, and they do not get along still. But the Davison incident did not represent the nadir of their rocky relationship. Rather, it was merely one more battle in a long and exhausting war.

  Much of the videotape produced by Sandra Lukow was devoted to Tonya’s relationship with her mother. There was considerable anger from both sides, but Tonya came across as the more resentful, and bruised, of the two.

  “My relationship with my mom is really bad,” she said. “She is not … I mean, she’s a good mother, but she’s not a good mother. She hits me and beats me. If something goes wrong with work, then she takes it out on me. And everything she does, she yells at me or takes it out on me.”

  During one particularly telling scene, Tonya was in her hotel room in New York, calling home after finishing sixth in the senior nationals. She had not given a terrible performance, but neither was it one of her best. Tonya had fallen in the long program and thus lost any chance of a medal, but her ability and grit had made people take notice.

  That was the message she attempted to convey to her mother over the phone, and though the video camera and microphone recorded only half of the conversation, it was clear that Tonya was not getting the response, the approval, that she had sought.

  “Yes, collect call … Tonya …”

  Pause.

  “Hi Mom! How are you? Is Dad still there?”

  Pause.

  “OK. I don’t know if it’s going to be televised or not. I don’t know, but I got sixth.”

  Pause.

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Pause.

  “No, that’s good, cause now I get my international.”

  Pause.

  “Well, tell Dad that it might be televised, I don’t know. If it does, it—”

  Pause.

  “I got half a credit for it, Mom!”

  Pause.

  “Yup. OK. Will do. Bye.”

  Hang-up.

  “What … a … bitch!”

  In the room with Tonya at the time, observing what to her must have seemed a fairly typical episode of familial discord among the Hardings, was Diane Rawlinson.

  “What happened?” Rawlinson asked Tonya.

  And from that moment on, Harding seemed less like a woman on the brink of national or international athletic prominence than a scared and wounded little girl.

  “Mom said that, um … she goes: ‘So, I heard you missed your combination. You know, you didn’t get any credit at all for that.’ And I said, ‘Mom!’ And she goes, ‘You did terrible, you know that!’ She said, ‘You sucked!’ And I said, ‘Mom, I got half a credit for it.’ She goes, ‘So, the rest of the program sucked also.’ And I said, ‘Mom, you didn’t—’ And she goes, ‘Well, just so long as you tried.’ And I said, ‘I did.’ ”

  At that point Harding stopped talking. She sat motionless on the bed, wringing her hands, staring off into space, as if in a trance. Suddenly, she snapped into focus.

  “Do you have a telephone book here? I’m hungry.”

  Perhaps she was making it up, or at least amplifying the ugliness of the conversation. Perhaps not. Certainly it seemed unpleasant enough.

  In general, 1986 was not a good year for Tonya Harding. It wasn’t bad on the ice, but at home there was only chaos. LaVona and Al were having trouble. Their marriage was coming apart. It didn’t help that he was out of work and LaVona was exhausted from trying to support the family, and she and Tonya were bickering constantly.

  Eventually, the strain took its toll. Tonya, who by this time had already dropped out of high school (she would eventually earn an equivalency degree from a local community college) to devote the majority of her time to skating, arrived home one afternoon to a near-empty house.

  It was quiet. Quieter than she could ever remember.

  The furniture was gone.

  Likewise, six cords of wood she and Al had split themselves. Gone. All gone.

  And so was LaVona.

  “I stayed with Dad,” Tonya told Sports Illustrated. “Mom didn’t want anything to do with me. I remember she told me I was the only reason my parents had stayed together. That didn’t make me feel good at all.”

  Father and daughter did the best they could after that, but it was impossible for Tonya to support them both while adhering to the rigorous schedule of a world-class athlete. Less than a year later Al was offered a job, which might have been a godsend for Tonya, had the job not been in Boise, Idaho. Having no real alternative, Al accepted the job and moved out of town, leaving his little girl—no longer so little—on her own.

  She wasn’t able to make it on her own yet, though, and so she moved back in with her mother, who by this time was remarried. LaVona and James Golden shared their home with Tonya until she was 18. It was a difficult two years, filled with emotional trauma that left scars on all parties. Even now Tonya’s stepfather has very few kind words for her, noting, as he did in Newsweek, that if Tonya had the charisma and charm of Nancy Kerrigan, to go along with her formidable talent, “She’d have been on top a long time ago—and stayed there.”

  There was some disagreement over the circumstances surrounding Tonya’s departure from the Golden house. Put simply, Tonya insisted that she was forced out; the Goldens claimed otherwise.

  “My mother and her husband basically kicked me out,” Harding told Sports Illustrated. “If I was to live under their roof, I had to live under their rules. They wanted me to pay rent or move out. I couldn’t handle it.”

  LaVona denied those allegations vehemently. She also said she was hardly the portrait of the “bitch” painted by Tonya. “When I wasn’t home, I was working. I did try,” LaVona said.

  “She couldn’t wait to turn 18 so she could be with Jeff. I warned her about him before she married him. Then I didn’t say anything else.”

  This would be Jeff Gillooly, the man Tonya eventually married; the man she eventually divorced; th
e man with whom she was living when the Kerrigan attack occurred; and the man who has been at the center of the controversy surrounding Tonya Harding.

  Five

  By 1990 Tonya Harding had become Tonya Harding Gillooly. Jeff Gillooly, a conveyor belt operator with the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, was the dominant male force in her life. But he was not the only one exerting influence. Indeed, one of the great ironies about Tonya Harding is that, for all her supposed independence, she seems to depend greatly on the approval and assistance of others—if only for brief periods of time.

  One of these people—perhaps the most important one—was Diane Rawlinson, the person most responsible for shaping Tonya Harding the skater. She coached and trained, trying to make Tonya into something more than an athletic machine.

  Not that this was unusual in figure skating circles. Skaters and coaches share huge chunks of their lives, and it’s not at all unusual for the relationship to take on a familial tone, replete with anger and jealousy and territoriality. It is, almost by necessity, a relationship that runs bone-deep and because of Tonya’s difficult childhood, the bond between her and Rawlinson was deeper and more intense than most student-coach relationships. Like the Webbers, Diane and Denny Rawlinson became a second family to Tonya.

  Together, they tried to give her the love she had been lacking.

  They also tried to orchestrate her career.

  “Denny and I largely have paid for everything she’s done in the past few years,” Rawlinson said in 1986. “[Choreographer] Vicky Mills has donated her time; we have a costume designer who has worked practically for nothing; Highlight Skate Company from San Francisco has given us a good deal on the skates, and the rink has donated a lot of free time. But it’s still really, really expensive.”