Fire on Ice

by Oregonian Staff

  The article came out just before the national championships and Olympic trials in Orlando, Florida. Harding, as is customary, had a news conference before she began her competition. But this time she had to do it the day after a major story which she considered a huge embarrassment.

  Harding told reporters she didn’t like some of the elements in the story but declined to be more specific.

  Was the story accurate?

  “In parts,” Harding said.

  Was she pleased with it?

  “In parts,” she replied.

  When pressed further she said, “It’s fine. I’m here to talk about my skating. I think everything is going real positive for me. I’m happy. There are a few things that can be said about the article, but there’s not any reason to. It’s only an article.”

  The news conference moved on to mostly talking about her skating. Afterward, coach Dody Teachman said, “This could have been a real nightmare, but I think it went quite well.”

  Harding was also relieved. She had been nervous beforehand, she told Oregonian writer Terry Richard, and she had help from her coaches. “They talked to me and I listened,” Harding said. “But I basically went in there and did what I wanted to do.”

  She said her main regret about the magazine’s story was that “they never put in there that my husband has been really supportive of me.” She thought that was important, even though at the time she talked to the writer, she was separated from Gillooly and was dating other men.

  “Jeff always put food on the table and a roof over my head,” Harding told Richard. “He paid for my skating for a couple of years. If it hadn’t been for him during that time, I wouldn’t have been skating. I don’t think he looked very good in the article. But there’s no problem between us.”

  Questions about her personal life taken care of, Harding got ready to defend her national title and earn a spot on the Olympic team, which was, of course, her lifelong dream. This was her moment. And then she went out and skated abysmally.

  A skater’s short or original program is usually more nerve-racking than the long program. There is more pressure to be perfect. Although the short program is worth only one third of a skater’s final score, it provides the judges with that all-important first impression. Anyone who falls in the early part of a short program can forget about winning the overall competition.

  In Orlando Arena that day, Harding was the sixteenth skater to take the ice. Kerrigan, who was the second skater, had performed a clean program and completed all her required elements, giving her scores of mostly 5.7 (out of a possible 6.0). Those were the numbers to beat.

  No other skater had come close to Kerrigan when Harding had her turn. During warmups she landed a big triple axel jump. But when the music began and the judges watched intently, Harding faltered. She went up for her big jump and landed on her rear. Because the triple axel was part of a combination, she was doubly penalized.

  Harding blamed an ankle strain from that morning’s practice. “When I landed, my foot just buckled under me,” she said. “It was very painful.” But she said she still planned to try the triple axel in her long program.

  After Harding, the reliably brilliant Yamaguchi came out and, as usual, skated beautifully. So going into the long program, the defending champion was only third. And Harding had been given something of a break by the judges—her scores for required elements were all 5.3 or 5.2, but scores for presentation were 5.8 and 5.7s.

  In the long program things were no different. Harding took the ice immediately after Yamaguchi’s performance, one of the best of her career. Harding was warming up as Yamaguchi’s scores for artistic merit were announced—and they included a perfect 6.0, the only one in the competition. The crowd roared.

  As the applause quieted, Harding took center ice and waited for her music. Once again she tried the triple axel, and once again came crashing down on her rump. The rest of the four-minute performance was mediocre at best; Harding completed only two triples in all. She limped off the ice.

  The judges were more than generous in giving Harding third place and thus a berth on the Olympic team. And Harding tried not to use her sore ankle as an excuse. “I’m pleased that I’m on the team and I really don’t care whether I’m in first, second or third.”

  —

  Nancy Kerrigan and Kristi Yamaguchi arrived in Albertville, France, in time for the opening ceremonies for the 1992 Olympic Games. They wore their team uniforms, waved flags and marched, were roommates in the athletes’ village, watched other athletes compete. There they were, in the stands, cheering Paul Wylie to a silver medal in the men’s figure skating competition. Good friends, good sports. Practicing a few hours a day and just waiting for their chance to compete.

  Tonya Harding stayed in Portland. She was nursing her sore ankle and her injured pride after the dismal showing at the nationals. And she had a new excuse—her problems were caused by new skating boots she wore in Orlando. They were too stiff. Harding went back to wearing her old boots.

  She practiced in the morning at the shopping mall rink and in the evenings as well. And she decided not to go to France until the last possible minute.

  Dody Teachman said that she was practicing well, even as the Olympics were under way. She was skating great, she said. She had lost weight, and she was skating without stopping and restarting, her usual mode of practice.

  It wasn’t until three days before the women’s competition began that Harding got on a plane. Jeff Gillooly walked his wife through the Portland airport, and it was clear that they were annoyed with the reporters and cameras. Gillooly shielded Harding’s face with his hands, to spoil pictures. She was a champion athlete on the way to the Olympics. She looked like a criminal on the way to prison.

  Clearly, very clearly, something was dreadfully wrong with Harding throughout this period, but she hasn’t talked much about it publicly. She said only that it wasn’t her fault—her leg was hurt, the boots not right, her asthma had acted up, her coaches were wrong.

  After she finally arrived in France, ten days into the Games, she held a press conference.

  “Things are going positive for me,” she said. “I’m skating good. Yes, I lost weight. The reason I came in late was that I wanted to have the ice time that was available to me at home that would not be available to me here. I also had won an event, the Oregon Athlete of the Year award. I was supposed to go to the banquet but was not able to go because of fixing boots.”

  She also said she felt good—like the way she did before the 1991 nationals. She also declared that she had never had jet lag in her life.

  To no one’s surprise, Harding fell while trying the triple axel in the Olympic Games. Less than a minute into her original program, she coiled and sprang for the big jump, and crashed. Once again, she was penalized for missing her combination. Midori Ito, favored for the gold but hurting from injuries, decided not to try her triple axel after watching Harding fail. But Ito crashed on a usually reliable—for her—triple lutz.

  After the competition, Harding refused to speak to reporters.

  She was sixth going into the finals, virtually out of medal contention. After practice the next day, she talked about pulling out all the stops and going for a quadruple loop jump in the free skate, which would have made history. But when it was time to skate for the medals, she tried, once again, to land a triple axel. And once again she fell.

  After that shaky start she doubled two other planned triple jumps but ended up landing five double jumps cleanly. It was a solid, if unspectacular, performance, and the judges didn’t know quite what to make of it. Her scores for technical merit ranged from 5.3 to 5.7; for artistic impression, from 5.2 to 5.7.

  But it was a year when everyone fell. Even Yamaguchi, the eventual gold medalist, hit the ice during the freestyle skate. Midori Ito also attempted a triple axel and fell—but then threw in another later in her program and landed it. The spirited effort vaulted her to a silver medal. And graceful Nancy Kerrigan, i
n a beautiful white designer costume, was the surprise bronze medalist, despite taking her own inelegant tumble.

  If Harding had not tried the triple axel and had stayed on her feet, she would have taken home an Olympic medal. As it was, she finished fourth—no doubt the most frustrating place to finish at an Olympics—and once again refused to talk to reporters. She left France before the closing ceremonies.

  Harding came back to Portland and greeted the cameras that were waiting for her at the airport with a sour expression.

  “I can’t believe you guys are here,” she said. “I didn’t tell anyone.”

  Harding was chafing and ready to make some changes. She dumped her coach, Dody Teachman, and rehired Diane Rawlinson. She fired her choreographer, Barbara Flowers, and hired Erika Bakacs. She decided to do two entirely new programs for the world championships, which were just a month after the Olympics.

  —

  One morning in early March, Harding made the news again. Police were called to an intersection in Clackamas County, southeast of downtown Portland. Harding was having an argument with another driver, a woman. When police arrived, they found Harding standing in the street, armed with a baseball bat. Apparently, Harding was in a hurry. She was upset because the car in front of her did not turn right on a red light. Two days later, Harding apologized through her agent, saying that “while it wasn’t her fault, she regrets the incident and is sorry that it happened.”

  When Harding arrived at the world championships, in Oakland, California, nine days later, she faced questions about the incident.

  “That was blown way out of proportion; I feel really sorry about it,” she said. “I’ve learned that people look at me as a celebrity. Sometimes I don’t remember that. I don’t look at myself as a celebrity.” She talked about all the changes in her coaching and programs and said that she would like one more change: from now on she was to be known as Tonya Harding-Gillooly.

  Then she went out and skated indifferently. She finished sixth overall, a placing that other skaters’ coaches complained about. They were sure Harding had received preferential treatment from the judges.

  “There was a game of placements,” said Gilles Beyer, who coached skater Laetitia Hubert of France. “We are in the United States and they want to support Harding.”

  “The judging was horrible,” said Nancy Kerrigan’s coach, Mary Scotvold. “Hubert was third. I would have been happy with fifth for Nancy, but not if it was behind Harding.”

  Kerrigan ended up with the bronze, Yamaguchi the gold. The quiet Olympic champ serenely skated away into professional ranks with her Newsweek and Sports Illustrated covers, her endorsement contracts, her Wheaties box, her medals, and declined to try another Olympics. Meanwhile, Kerrigan and Harding announced that they would aim for 1994, that they would both go for the gold.

  A year and a half later, Harding passionately would insist that she had lost her national title and the 1992 Olympics because of the profile of her that had appeared in Sports Illustrated. It had influenced the judges against her, she was sure. They were prejudiced and wouldn’t let her win. She told anyone who would listen that everything in the story was “a lie.” Everything. The only thing they had gotten right was the spelling of her name.

  5

  The Hard Luck Club

  After 1992, Kristi Yamaguchi swore off the rigors of amateur skating. The professional circuit, with its long days of travel but good pay and easy competition, was what the Olympic and world champion wanted now. Her transition was expected, and so was the ascent of Nancy Kerrigan to fill her spot as America’s top amateur skater.

  Tonya Harding couldn’t control the inevitable. Her poor showing at the 1992 world championships knocked her from her perch near the top of the skating hierarchy. She was back down with the newcomers and developing skaters, assigned to the Skate Canada International for her fall competition instead of one of the more prestigious events. In Victoria, British Columbia, Harding skated against inferior skaters and bombed. She finished fourth, coughing and gasping for air because the cold air triggered an asthma attack.

  At the first United States Figure Skating Association-sponsored pro-am event later that fall, Harding finished second to Kerrigan, but the disappointment was eased by the paycheck for $20,000.

  But Harding returned to the practice rink with the realization that her asthma was worse. It was harder to get through her long programs and she had to pause in practices to use her inhaler.

  Harding is one of nearly ten million Americans who suffer from asthma. Asthma—Greek for “panting”—causes inflammation in the lungs, which makes the lungs produce mucus and contracts the muscles around the airways. A person suffering an asthma attack struggles for breath. The difficulty in getting oxygen varies from person to person, but it can be dangerous enough to lead to death. Some people have mild attacks only when they exercise. For others, it’s a daily ordeal.

  Tonya Harding was in the second group. She was born with the affliction. When she exercised hard, or when the air was cold and dry, or if a certain kind of pollen was in the air, Harding felt her lungs seize up. An inhaler helped, but the condition had begun affecting her in competition. In Minneapolis in 1991, reporters asked if she had a cold when she couldn’t stop coughing. No, just mild asthma, she replied. By Skate Canada in late 1992, Harding felt the condition steal some of her energy in the long program.

  Other athletes have competed, and excelled, with asthma. Jackie Joyner Kersee, for example, learned to control the condition and eventually won two Olympic gold medals in the demanding heptathlon. Tonya’s friends had been after her for years to see a specialist and to stop relying on over-the-counter medication that didn’t always work. In the fall of 1992, the always obstinate Harding finally agreed.

  Dr. Marilyn Rudin, a Portland pulmonary specialist, tested Harding’s lung capacity. When she was exercising, the skater had use of as little as twenty percent of her capacity. For most of her life, and all of her adulthood, Harding hadn’t known what it felt like to draw a normal breath.

  The commonly used bronchial dilaters that Harding had relied on treated only the symptoms and often made them worse. The dilaters open air passages by relaxing the muscles controlling the lungs, but they do nothing to help the inflammation that is the main problem. Instead, the inflammation becomes worse when sufferers, trying to get relief, take inhalers more frequently. Studies show that long-term, heavy use can lead to death.

  The best treatment, experts agree, is to reduce the swelling—typically using high doses of cortisone—and then begin a regular therapy of cortisone, anti-inflammatories and bronchial dilators to keep the symptoms to a minimum.

  That’s what Rudin wanted to do for Harding, but she would have to wait until after the national championships. In the meantime, Harding was using a new type of medication, which kept the asthma in check and boosted her energy level.

  “I woke up this morning ready to go,” Harding said after an on-ice practice. “The only problem is getting too excited. I can feel my heart beating.”

  With the asthma under control, Harding was able to focus on her programs and the upcoming 1993 national championships in Phoenix, Arizona, where she was expected to be one of three women to earn a trip to the World Championships in Prague. She planned to do the triple axel in her long program and had been hitting the jump consistently in practice until the week before she left Portland. Missing the jump didn’t worry her. It would be there when she needed it, she said.

  After finishing second at the 1992 championships, Nancy Kerrigan was expected to make the logical step up to champion in Phoenix. Kerrigan didn’t willingly accept the role of favorite.

  “When I’m on the ice, I just have to concentrate on the skating and what I’ve been training at home to do,” she said. “Out there, in the practices, I’m not really paying attention to the other skaters because I’m doing my own thing, and I have to get ready.”

  Harding missed her press conference and showed up la
te for a rescheduled meeting with reporters the next day. She smiled, but she also refused to answer questions about her childhood, personal problems that affected her past performances, and recent weight loss.

  “My skating is me and what I like to do and what I want to do,” she said. “It really doesn’t matter whether I had a blue-collar background or whether I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. My skating is happy. My life is happy.”

  Harding stayed happy at the press conference until her coach, Diane Rawlinson, let slip that the skater had lost the weight using Jenny Craig’s diet plan. Harding glared at her coach, and stalked out of the room. “Oh, dear,” Rawlinson said with a sigh.

  —

  Nancy Kerrigan began her appointed glide toward the national title by finishing first in the technical program, but it was Harding who won over the crowd of almost ten thousand at Phoenix’s America West Arena. Kerrigan was all elegance in a black costume; Harding turned what could have been a skating tragedy into a good laugh and a strong performance.

  She wore a tiny red spangled costume of her own design for the short program. The sleeveless bodice was caught by a small clasp behind Harding’s neck, and the effect of the sequins climbing from the material was of bright flames. Skating second-to-last, Harding began her program to music from the movie Footloose. She spun into the air for her opening jump, a planned triple lutz-double toe jump combination, but threw one leg out and turned the jump into a single at the same time that she clasped her hands to her throat. The arena went silent. The crowd couldn’t see what Rawlinson saw.

  “As soon as Tonya did her first two moves, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, her dress is undone. This should be an interesting lutz,’ ” Rawlinson recalled.

  Pretty soon the crowd was in on the predicament, and Harding shared their laughter. The competition referees let her fix the dress with a safety pin and begin again. Harding hit her opening jump combination as if nothing had happened. With the crowd behind her, she skated a nearly flawless performance, finishing slightly behind Kerrigan going into the long program but within easy range to win.