From the rink to the ring

TEN years ago Tonya Harding found herself the unlikely cover girl of Time magazine. She was not a complete unknown but her newly-won status as US National Figure Skating champion hardly warranted the attention she was getting, even in the build-up to the following month’s Winter Olympics in Lillehammer.

Her image had been catapulted around the world thanks to a sporting rivalry that had found prominence not just beyond figure skating but sport as a whole. This was a rivalry so intense it captured the imagination of millions across the world and nearly landed Harding in prison.

Eighteen days before her picture appeared on the cover of the January 24, 1994, issue of Time, fellow Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was preparing to defend her US title in Detroit. With competition due to begin the following day, she had stopped to talk with journalists at the ice rink when her world was turned upside down. An unknown attacker ran past the 24-year-old skater and delivered a devastating blow to her knee with a metal baton.

It was an assault that would send shock waves through the Olympic community and forever link an unlikely pair: Kerrigan, the elegant ice princess from a middle-class Massachusetts town, and her chief rival, Tonya Harding, who had honed her tougher, more muscular routines in the blue collar ice rinks around Portland, Oregon on America's northern Pacific coast.

Kerrigan had won a bronze medal at the 1992 Winter Olympics and was one of the favourites to win the gold medal at the '94 games. But she had been made aware that she would face a fight for top spot on the Lillehammer podium.

Harding, her fellow American and rival, had been talking tough ahead of the US championships, the 23-year-old telling the media: "It's not going to be a true crown until I get at Nancy down at the Olympics, and let me tell you, I'm going to whip her butt."

So when the vicious physical attack on Kerrigan on January 6 sparked outrage and a media frenzy, it was only a matter of time before investigators began to look at Harding. She denied any involvement and told a news conference: "I feel really bad for what happened, I feel really fortunate it wasn't me."

But Harding's ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, told FBI investigators that Harding had been behind it from the beginning. Co-conspirator Shawn Eckardt also alleged Harding knew about the attack in an interview with ABC Television journalist Diane Sawyer on January 20, 1994.

"She knew that it was that it had been initiated," Eckardt told Sawyer. "She knew that it was going to take place."

When Kerrigan and Harding got to Lillehammer, the media scrutiny was immense. They even practiced together on the ice at the Olympic rink on February 17 and six days later their competitive showdown ended up being the third most-watched American sports broadcast of all time.

Harding had a poor showing in Lillehammer, finishing eighth, but Kerrigan fully recovered skated almost flawlessly, and went from victim to victor, earning a silver medal, although some observers felt Kerrigan might have won gold had it not been for the attack.

Gillooly and three others later admitted to carrying out the attack on Kerrigan and cut a deal with prosecutors, while Harding accepted a plea bargain on a charge of hindering the prosecution and was sentenced to three years' probation.

She says she only learned of the attack after it happened and then kept quiet about it out of fear. Harding was forced to resign her US Figure Skating Association membership and was stripped of her 1994 national title.

It was not the last we would hear of Harding, however. In 2001, she spent three days in jail for hitting her boyfriend with a hubcap during a drunken argument while in January 2002, a Washington state judge evicted her from home after she failed to pay $4,350 in rent and late fees.

And thanks to those brushes with the law and a blossoming, if unlikely boxing career, Tonya the tenacious trailer park ice queen is still making news. Darren Rovell, a sports business reporter for American sports website ESPN.com, says the assault on Kerrigan has turned Harding into a cult figure while aspiring entrepreneurs have, time and again, tried to capitalise on her notoriety.

"A company called Revolution Gifts filed a trademark application for the 'Batonya,'" Rovell said, "which would be put on toy bats and balls." Thankfully, nothing was ever produced. And a Minneapolis lawyer was for a time offering his invention called the Tonya Tapper, a metal stick with a rubber grip described as 'a non-lethal defensive device' that cost $39.95."

In addition to the more macabre cash-ins, there have been Tonya fridge magnets, posters and even 'Tonya for President' badges as well as books which quickly found their way to the bargain bin sections.

According to Rovell, Fire on Ice: The Exclusive Inside Story of Tonya Harding is now available online for one cent while internet bookstore Amazon stocks, among other titles, Thin Ice: The Complete Uncensored Story of Tonya Harding on cassette, comic book classics called The Tonya Harding Story and Whacked! The Adventures of Tonya Harding and Her Pals as well as the more highbrow Women on Ice: Feminist Essays on the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan Spectacle.

Jon Turner, an airline agent at Harding's hometown Portland International Airport, was amazed at how the skater continued to stay in the news and it led him to join the growing band of Harding entrepreneurs.

HE commissioned a local newspaper cartoonist to create a caricature of Harding with a cigarette in her mouth, skates in one hand, hubcap in the other and a trailer in the background. He then used the image as a label for his Tonya Hot Sauce which comes with the motto: "A sauce not for the weak kneed!" and the supposed endorsement: "It's a lead pipe cinch you'll love it! N Kerrigan."

Turner, who says he's sold more than 5,000 cases of the stuff with 60,000 bottles fetching $4.95 each, claims it's the top-selling hot sauce in the Portland area. "She keeps screwing up every four or five months," says Turner. "Every time she boxes, she hits somebody, gets busted for driving under the influence or gets evicted from her house, sales go up," he revealed.

In October 2002, Turner got a letter from a lawyer representing Harding telling him he had to stop selling his hot sauce in a store called Made in Oregon. Turner says he responded by offering Harding a 25-cent royalty on every bottle, but Harding or her lawyer never responded.

"It only got my product more exposure," Turner said. "People thought I would have to stop selling them so people were buying cases and selling them on eBay for $30 a bottle."

Turner is banking on some renewed interest in the sauce this month. "This 10th anniversary thing should be good she's been pretty quiet the last three months and sales have fallen a bit."

As for Harding, she will spend the 10th anniversary of her spat with Kerrigan preparing for her next fight. Barred from competing as an amateur skater and shunned by professional skating companies, Harding launched her boxing career in February 2003 when millions of viewers tuned in to Fox TV's Celebrity Boxing special to watch Harding hammer Paula Jones, the woman who filed a sexual harassment suit against then-US president Bill Clinton, with a third-round TKO.

Now she's a regular on the women's professional boxing circuit and featured in one of the warm-up bouts for the Mike Tyson-Clifford Etienne heavyweight fight last February. With three wins and two defeats so far, she steps into the ring against Beth Westover on January 24 at the Bank of America Centre in Boise, Idaho.

And while Harding has made her way from the rink to the ring, Kerrigan, also now 34, has married her agent, Jerry Solomon, and is involved in a number of television and charitable programmes in addition to raising their seven-year-old son.

A decade later, it seems, the two former figure skaters are still worlds apart.