Doomed to Fail - Ep 238: Olympic retro - Tonya Harding & Nancy Kerrigan

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

We're back! Happy Women's History Month! We think this counts - well, specifically, Taylor thinks this counts. The main characters are women, and the men in this story are SUCH IDIOTS that it's a + for women.   It's 1994, and the rivalry between Tonya Harding & Nancy Kerrigan is heating up (I know, I know). Enter Tonya's ex/current husband, Jeff, and his band of boobs (tm).   It's the Olympics! It's a crime! Tonya & Nancy are INCREDIBLE athletes!   Join us!   Are you young enough not to know what happens? Fascinating. Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In the matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortenthall James Simpson, case number B.A. 019. And so, my fellow Americans. And what your country can do for you. Boom, Taylor, we are alive and we're recording. How are you? I'm okay. I was sick all week. It's daylight savings day, which is also weird.

Wait, it's daylight savings day? Yeah. It happened last night. Did you know that? If you don't have any, like, manual clocks, like, check your oven. But, like, you don't have, like, any clock. right? I didn't know that happened.

That might explain a little bit of why you feel weird today. Oh my God. I had no idea. I woke up and I was like, man, I really slept in late today. Yeah. And that's part of the psychology that was like, oh, my body is just out of it. Like, how did I sleep so much later than normal? It's just weird.

Wow. Wow. We sprang forward. Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. I should have told you that earlier, but I, that absolutely makes sense. I was actually really worried about it, Taylor, because I have a morning coffee meeting. And I was like, if I woke up on my own this late, I'm going to have a hard time tomorrow with this meeting. And so I was like, trying to go to bed super early. And it didn't. Wow. I mean, now you know, it'll take you, it takes like a data adjust, you know. I didn't adjust. I have one clock. I didn't adjust yet. everything else did. All right. Well, lessons learned. This is why we talk with what we have to do these things because I don't learn otherwise. So thank you.

You're welcome. How was you know? How's my God turtle doing? My goodness. Benjamin Franklin's ghost woke up. He is doing wonderful. He has not eaten anything yet, but he's learning how to walk again. He's like kind of walking and kind of shaky because I don't know if he slept for five months, your legs would be a little shaky.

but he's so cute. And I gave him a bath in the sink, and I kind of soaked him for a little bit, whenever I went in and checked on him. His face was up, and he was looking at me. Like, Mom, I missed you. He missed you. So he's fully, fully up.

Like, he's about... I think so. He's been walking around. He hasn't eaten, but he's been walking around. And then our backyard is a mess because we're doing some construction. And he can't really be back there right now. So we bought him a big, not big, but a kitty pool. So I'm going to have him in the kitty pool most today.

He has been a lot of the day with me in my office. And I'm excited to see him again. I took like a thousand videos of him. He's just so cute. The videos are very cute. The videos are totally cute. Yes, we all love BFG. Yeah.

Well, do you want to go and introduce us? Yes, hello, everyone. Welcome to doomed to fail. We are a podcast. We bring you historical disasters and failures. I'm Taylor. And this is Fars. Yay, I'm Fars.

We're going to hear a Taylor story. Anyway, so I want to do something stupid because I was like, I don't want to cry. And I had read this book for last time. because it is an Olympic story, I read an absolutely terrible book that I'll tell you about. But so I thought, for Women's History Month,

I'm going to do an Olympic story that is centered around women who are fine. They're like, great athletes. I will tell you about them. But they're not like Amelia Earhart. You know, I'm not going to like put the picture on my wall. But the crux of the story is

the men in the story are so fucking stupid that like, that makes it a women's history month story. It's your favorite. made to cover it. So stupid. It's very, very fun. So I'm going to tell you about

Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. Oh, this is going to be good. So fun. This is so good. Have we never covered this, really? Mm-mm. Wow, I'm shocked.

I know, I know. So the book that I read, like, I don't know, a couple weeks ago, is called Fire on Ice. exclusive inside story of Tanya Harding. It's by the staff at the Oregonian newspaper. So Tanya Harding's from Oregon. I'll say that again later. So the book comes out and we'll do like a timeline. Like if you don't know what happened, we'll tell you what happened. He'll do a timeline. But the book comes out in February 1994, which is like while all this stuff is actively happening.

There's like FBI investigations. There's the Olympics have not even happened yet, all these things. So this book is terrible. There are a lot of mistakes, like entire paragraphs twice. You know, like, it's just like they like zoomed it out. Yeah, they really rushed it. Which is fair. You know, this is happening in your, in your home state. Like, it's by the newspaper staff.

They probably just compiled a bunch of articles that already ran in and like made this book. But the addition that I read of it was from 2017. And they could have at least fixed those things. They didn't. Like, they didn't update it. Like, added an afterward or like anything else, but they didn't. It still might as well, I'm going to open my adagoc. It's still, it's just like it was when they did it in 1994.

And I'm like, at least get an editor. I don't know. Have your mom read it and have we like, don't publish us. I don't know. It doesn't seem that hard. But that book was terrible. But obviously, like, I've seen I, Tanya. Have you seen that?

I didn't see it because I knew what the general theme of it was. and I kind of, I don't know, I guess in my mind, I kind of painted Tanya Harding as the villain. Even though I know that she's really not the villain, and her story is actually really sad. It is. But I didn't want to watch something that was going to be, like, over-the-top sympathetic.

It's like the, it's like the Eileen Warnos movie, you know? And you're like, I don't really, we don't need to make this person crazy sympathetic, but whatever. I mean, I mean, I want to have exceptionally different things than Dr. Hart. I know. I know. I know. I know.

I have to edit this out. The thing that I got out of that movie, which I did watch, I cried during it. I would pray now is the way I felt after it was like, why was this person given this exceptional talent? you know it just like doesn't match up with her life she was just like given an exceptional talent and had to figure out what to do with it when like nothing else in her life would have made her made it okay and i'll tell you all that but that's what i got from yeah it was good i liked it was sad she was she was sympathetic you're right so let me tell you about tanya harding her name is now tanya price she's been married for a while but tanya harding was born on november 12th 1970 in portland

Oregon. She's part of a very working class family. Her mom's name is Lovana Golden, and her dad's name was Albert Harding. Her dad was like an odd job, mostly unemployed guy working off of like disability, things like that. Her mom also had like odd jobs as well. Her, so things weren't great for the family. Like they didn't have like steady incomes, like that part of like Oregon. Yeah, like working poor. Exactly. Like, like, very like lower middle class white people like not even middle class low class white people yeah um so she did get to start figure skating when she was super young she was three which is crazy young to make a three-year-old put on ice skates i can't even imagine but she started doing it and she was really good

like exceptional you could tell right away so tanya would practice at the mall by her house which is fun because I feel like malls used to exist and have things like ice skating rinks. They used to be fun. You could be there like all day. Yeah, in the 90s it was a fun thing to do go spend time at the mall. Yeah. Yeah. And this is like the early 80s, like even like late 70s, early 80s.

So she's there all the time. And she is learning how to figure skate. So figure skating is like sports. are expensive, like four kids. So, like, my kids are in, like, Florence is in softball. She's been in softball for a bunch of years. So, like, it's, and that's like, this is, like, the cheapest sport we can possibly play. And it's, like, you know, $150 for the season.

Plus, you have to buy them a bat and a helmet and a bag and a glove. Uniform. And, yeah, the uniforms included in, like, the fee to do it. But, like, you have to buy shoes. Oh, shit. I have to buy Florence new cleats. You have to buy cleats because they're growing all the time. You have to do snacks at least once a season.

That's at least like $75. It adds up and it's expensive. And that's like the cheapest as it can go. Figure skating is super expensive. You have to pay for the time on the ice. When you are performing, you have to, like, competing. You have to buy expensive outfits. You have to practice all the time.

So the couple of people that I know that figure skated like, you know, like they could do a twirl, which is like a lot. but they were when they were like practicing in like junior high in high school. Like you're there at five in the morning before school for a couple hours practicing. Yeah. Don't forget the coaching. You have to hire expensive coaches because also it's not actually like an economically viable hobby because you can't survive unless you charge a lot of your life being a figure skating coach because how many people in your town are going to be figure skaters. Right.

And I do, I do, I don't, I didn't write down, but like she did have a coach for a lot of her childhood and then a different coach later. but yeah, like you're paying for that person and like who that person is trying to live their life too. Right. You know, yeah, totally. And travel because for figure skating competitions, I assume that like, you know, it's probably not like just one city over usually when you're going to for a competition. We probably have to go states over and stuff. Yeah, totally. And there's a bunch of figures skating competitions that like I've never seen, you know, like that are like, you know, that a lot of these, a lot of people do.

To save money, one of the things that Tanya, her mom made her costumes, which is, they were, they were very nice. It was very hard. I think that's hard. And I can, like, so relatively, I can do it a little bit, you know. But so that was super nice that she was able to do that for her. But they didn't look designers. There's always, like, a little bit of, like, a rough edge to Tanya's look. That's going to be part of her, her, like, legacy as well.

Her mom, you know, did, you know, she paid for those lessons. She took her there at five in the morning. she made her costumes, but her mom was not a nice person. She's still alive, but her mom was not nice to her daughter. She was verbally and sometimes physically abusive. That's what, you know, Tanya will say there are witnesses to like both. Some people say is overreacting. It's up for debate, but Tanya says that happened and I, you know, want to, I believe her.

Because her background is tough and it's hard to break those patterns. Like her mom was abused by her dad. You know, it's like just a cycle. Yeah, once you know about the men, she gets involved in, you can see the pattern just repeating itself. So it's probably true. Yeah. She was definitely, Tanya was definitely sexually assaulted in her childhood by a friend at one point when she's a little bit older, but when she is like a young girl and a young teen, she is assaulted by her half brother, who is her dad's son from another marriage. Eventually he will go to jail a little bit, but like it's not good.

Like it's not great. She doesn't have a lot of support. She's like, emotionally, you know what I mean? around her life. But all this time, she's going through these things. And she is figure skating. And she's like really good. Like, again, like, my particular movie for the movie is like, why I put this talent in this person?

Like, it just is so unfair that she couldn't, like, that she had her like life that was so distracting to this sport that she's actually excellent at. She starts to go to national things. like we were saying. So she starts to travel around. She quits high school, gets her GED, and she's figure skating. So to pause to talk about figure skating as a sport, again, it's extremely athletic.

Women who do it are expected to be able to do the athletic things, like all the axles and spins and everything, but also look very feminine and beautiful and like, you know, look like you're in the ballet. You know, you're wearing sparkly outfits. You know, Tanya's mom is making hers, but like, you know, watch. the Olympics are wearing like, you know, thousands of dollar thousands of dollar designer things. And you're supposed to be graceful and beautiful,

but also like secretly super athletic. So you can very gracefully do these things that look really, that are really fucking hard, you know? It's one of the most deceptive sports, I think, out there because you look at what they're doing and all I think about is how many times

has that guy or girl crack their spells open on ice and then have to get up and do that over? and over and over again. Or just like how bruised they are, you know, all over the body. You remember Elvis, like, the one guy from the Olympics who would just do these backflips and it was just insane. Wild. Wild.

Yeah, they do so much, so much stuff. So another thing that we talked about when we talked about the Olympics in our previous Olympic episodes and just wanted to come back to you, that the athletes in the Olympics are amateurs, which means that they're not being paid. for that. That's why it was a big deal when like NBA players were allowed to play in like the dream team and all of that because they're professional basketball players. Still doesn't make sense. Right. So if you are an amateur figure skater, you are, you qualify for being in like all of these things like the U.S. nationals and the Olympics. You can get money from sponsors. People, there's like a U.S. Figure skating committee. They will like donate like, you know, $10,000 to different people at a time. to be able to help them pay for things.

You can get like small endorsements and sponsors because you can't be paid to figure to skate like as a job. The post-Olympic goal for some people that, people who've done it like people, names you may have heard like Christy Yamaguchi are in Scott Hamilton. Those are the people who are now or like right at their post-Olympic career was professional where they were like tour. So you would like, you know, you can go to a local arena and see them skiing.

which would be cool. I definitely hope that the people who did this year did it. I'd love to see them. You know, like that, that's a thing. So there's that. And then also, this is the time in Olympic history. It is 1992 and 1994 that we're going to be talking about where the Olympics were split into two. So initially, there were always summer and winter Olympics, but they were always the same year every four years. So the summer Olympics would happen and then the Winter Olympics would happen, later. Some of the, that happened from the very first Winter Olympic game in 1924 all the way through 1992 when the summer games were in Barcelona and then the winter games were in Albertville, which I think is in Canada. So both happened in 1990, in 1992. The problem with that was like a lot of things. Like logistically, it's a nightmare. Like you are, you have to do two huge events in the same year. There are in different parts of the world because they're in different places. And then the winter Olympics weren't getting that much coverage because people had just watched a summer

Olympics and they were just like, they were a little bit burnt out. So in the 19, I think it was like 86, like in the in the 80s, the international Olympic committee decided to make the change where now, like it is now, the Olympics are every two years, but it goes summer, winter, summer winter. So for athletes, it's still every four years. but for us as people who just like play the Olympics it's every two years there are a couple people that I saw

this year who do both you know which is like they're like someone who has a summer Olympic skill and a winter Olympic skill which is cool but most people you know just have like their one sport so because of this there has to be an adjustment and the adjustment happened in 1992

when there was the winter Olympic Olympics and then in in in in in alberville and then 1994 they had the winter Olympics again in lily hammer norway so that is the one time in our Olympic history where there's two years between Olympic games for the athletes yeah yeah yeah so tanya and nancy and these names that you're gonna that you know christianamaguchi alexana by you all like the people who are in these things they have the opportunity to be in the Olympics two years apart 1992 and 1994 so that's happening so So Tanya is skating in a lot of competitions, and she's doing really well. It's in the 80s and early 90s. I mean, and these are things like, I don't know what these are, but there's like, she's second at Skate America. She's third at the U.S. Championships in 1986. In 1989, she wins first place at a competition in Moscow.

In 1990 and 1992, she'll be first at Skate America. She's first in the National Cup. She's third in the U.S. Championships in 1989, and then first. in 1991. So the 1991 U.S. Championships is her really big one where she does the triple axle on competition and she's the first woman to ever hit it. It's the one when she does it and she's like, she looks so excited and you're just like so happy for her because you know that she did it. It's super cool. So she does that. It was on February 16th. It's 1991 and it's huge. I'm going to cry thinking about it. So that one, she was the first woman to compete a triple

Axel in the short program. The first one to ever do two in the same competition. And then I think she did again. It was just so great. And so that is, I don't know, let's see the U.S. Championships or Skate America. That's one of those. It's a thing.

So she's doing great. And while she's in the competitions, her two closest rivals are Christy Yamaguchi and Nizakirian, who are both Americans. And they all go to the 1992 Olympics in Alberville. So the way that that works out, Chris Yamaguchi gets the gold.

Madori Ito from Japan gets silver and Nancy Kerrigan gets the bronze. Tanya Harding is fourth, which is the worst place to be in the Olympics. And so she's like bummed. And it's also like a subjective sport, you know, like you're getting like points based on like what the judges have. And so like, you know, and Tanya, they did, they were great power jumpers and they could do like a lot, a lot really athletic. and then Kristian Mukuchina and Scaregan are more of like a classical presentation. So Tanya's going to get knocked down because like her hair isn't perfect. Her costumes aren't as expensive.

She uses like now they use fun music. They used to use just classical music. But I remember her doing like the Jurassic Park soundtrack. And like it's classical music but it's like, you know, relevant to people. It's not Beethoven. Yeah. Yeah. That was like my whole takeaway to actually look this whole thing up a little while ago.

but it was like so much of like public opinion and how she ended up doing had nothing to do with her skills and everything to do with how she looked and like how she didn't have the you know the appearance of like an ice princess yeah exactly exactly so that's exactly right so she's like i mean she's just she's so good um so all this is happening a lot of stuff is happening in her life so we know that she quit high school got her gED um she also has like health things that are happening So it comes up in the 90s, we were talking about smoking cigarettes, but she smoked cigarettes, which is like not great if you're an athlete. And she has asthma. So she like has, it's hard for her to read sometimes, you know. And like so she has she's trying to deal with like that. So she's like athletic, but she's not like an example of an healthy athlete, which I think is going to be detrimental to her in like a different way. Because if she was like a super healthy athlete, she could have done things like Nancy Kerrigan does or she's on a cover of like a Wheaties box. And like that kind of. And like that kind of. stuff and tanya's not going to not going to get those those options so it also gets married so she marries a guy named jeff galuli and jeff sucks this guy is just he is a cartoon character he's the captain of our band of idiots and like he's a cartoon felon she's a cartoon absolutely absolute he's abusive he's shitty she's but she i think i mean she's she's too good for him but she doesn't know because she only has bad examples. Yeah.

You know? And so she only has bad examples of people who are like, you know, abusive to each other. And she doesn't know what love means. She doesn't know you can love someone and be nice to them. She doesn't have that. So she, they're also, like, very on and off. So they get married in 1990 and divorced in 1993. But then, like, the big thing is going to have in 1994.

And sometimes she'll say they're married. Sometimes she won't. Because she's also, like, doing press conferences. And people want to know about her personal life, but it's a mess, you know? So she'll tell, like, one group on a Tuesday, like, oh, I'm divorced. And then on a Friday, she'll be like, we're trying to work it out. And then the next week she'll be like, oh, we're divorced, you know, because they're just a mess and trying to figure it out. I put it on, it's, it's, I put it's mostly bad.

They're also kids. I think she was like 25 or something, right? She's younger. Yeah, I think. She might have been younger. She's born 1970. Yeah, she's 23. Yeah.

You're right. They're also kids. and they just have, they're just not able to. And they're handling the pressure of what's going on. And they don't have any like historical track record of how to handle anything like this. Yes. Again, they come from this like background, you know, where who's going to coach them on how to deal with the pressures that they're under? Right. Right. Yeah. No one. No. So that's weird and not good in going on in the background.

So now it's 1994. It's a U.S. figure skating championships and tanya's biggest rival is nancy carrigan well it's like it's like december 1993 to the beginning of 1994 because the Olympics are going to be in february 1994 so her biggest rival is nancy carrigan so talk about nancy carrigan was born on october 13th in 1969 in massachusetts and here's where i had the wrong assumption and you thought she was rich i thought she was rich she wasn't yep you know what she's rich in love and support and that made that and that matters more and that matters more that made the difference so i thought she was rich because she looks rich because she had like she is

very new england she has like her you know it's it's the 90s she has her brown hair and like her big scrunchy she has really pretty costumes like she's very elegant so you just like think that i thought i assumed that she was someone who had like her own private rink like in like in um the uh cutting edge you know like the girl on the cutting edge is like nice to hear again okay you know other people know so her mom was a homemaker tanya's youngest of three kids her dad also had a lot of odd jobs

so he did stuff like drive the zamboni you know and like do stuff to like make a little bit of money which is not different from tanya's parents like actual situation but her life didn't have the instability that tanya's had her mom didn't hit her her brother Others didn't hurt her. They loved her and they worked hard for her. So while Lovana worked hard for Tanya, she wasn't nice.

Nancy had a nice family along with the hard work. And that's what that's what did it to make, to like give her those couple extra decimals of points to be able to win those things over Tanya. Like that's why. Yeah. You know. So she had, and she also like, you know, she knows she probably had some of media training. Like you just had to talk to people.

like later do you remember when she's on SNL with Chris Farley and there's it's so funny they're like do like a couple skate oh that's gonna be so good and she's obviously like doing her stuff and he's just like following her around and like trying to twirl and like it's lovely it's a very good Chris Carlis Chris Farley bit later there's like a little bit of controversy I didn't look it up but I have remember it where like she was on like a Disney parade and she was like this fucking sucks and like people are in front of her but like of course she's also a kid

whatever but she seems fine like whatever she's fine but she's very lucky lucky in love and family which is very important so she gets not leg up because of the visuals so Tanya is so here's here's the here's the thing that happens Tanya they're both preparing

for the championships and the Olympics coming up Tanya is probably at home with Jeff they've already been divorced not divorced they're smoking cigarettes they're drinking I'm imagining this scene It's a horrible smelling trailer they're in a trailer sure it smells her

And so, like, what can we do to up your chances? And she's like, yeah, there must be something, you know. And they start thinking about, like, what they can do to be able to give Tanya, like, a leg up in some way. So, but I imagine that they're drunk and smoking having this conversation. Like I just said, like, that's, that's where there. So they decide that they should, in one way or another, like, I don't know what the words were. Like, she would say, like, oh, she thought they were kidding.

Or, like, she was like, oh, we were just, like, doing other things. whatever, but they decide to attack Nancy Kerrigan and eliminate her from competition. So Jeff decides to become the mastermind. And the trail from idiot to mastermind is not a real trail. You cannot do that. You cannot be an absolute idiot and then a mastermind and a criminal mastermind. He's going to remain an idiot because he doesn't know when to stop. So he just thinks that he's getting more and more like good at this and he's not.

You know what the funny part about all this is to me is it also is not a, straight line from you win the Olympics in like the 90s to you are exorbitantly wealthy and successful like you need like managers who had not to negotiate deals and where to place you and how to place you and like what did these guys think that like what if you said your airbrained steam totally and like part of the angle is get tanya the goals and then get those endorsements but like how what you're in that's a part that i know that's the part yeah He's not going to be able to do that because he's stupid. It's just not going to happen.

So, again, the story divorced with him is happening. She's going to testify, like, he, you know, he does hurt her, you know, physically. And he also, like, there's, like, all these police reports where, like, people call the police because there's two people on the side of the road, like, pointing guns in each other. And it's, like, it's them. It's insane. There's stories out there of, like, her trying to run him over with her car. then he gets in the car and brought it like it is just i don't know it's really bad yeah absolutely so jeff decides to bring together a band of idiots so first we have sean ecert and sean is played by the absolute

gem paul walter hauser in the movie i tell you paul walter hauser is the canadian farva and super duper's two which I told you to watch. And he's also Richard Jewell, you know what I'm talking about. Yes. Yeah, of course, of course. He's a delightful character actor, a great fat guy. I was going to say, like, I don't know why the story is so much worse that the guy who does all this is a fat guy, and he looks like a doofus, but it just makes it so much stupider. He looks like a dupist, but like, and I mean, I totally just.

I like a fat guy. Like, like Pritzker. I think it's kind of delightful, you know, but you could also be like a total deefist back guy and that's what that's what Sean is. It's just the idea of like him like running away from the attack, like hobbling and barely being able to do it. He's not the guy who did the attack. Oh, he's not. Okay. I'm getting the story's wrong.

Sorry. There's three guys involved, but Sean is the guy who thinks he's the spy. And he thinks he's a spy so much that he says things with a hundred percent conviction like this is true. Like, I've spent a lot of time in Russia. working for the KGB. You know, I spent, you know, before the wall fell to a lot of time

in East Germany, and I worked for the government and did all these things. And it's like, Sean, you have not left your mother's house. You've not done any of those fucking things. He officially said he was very experienced in security

and counterterrorism. He is not. He's done none of those things. Also lies that you hear from the mouth of a fat guy. Yes, exactly. And he, so he,

in the end of I Tanya, there's like a part where they show like real video clips of like the real people and there are videos of Sean where he's like yeah and they did all these things and then the interview goes no you didn't and he goes yes I did

we checked you didn't he's like but I did like he like just like just like what a absolute conspiracy where this guy's actually like the number one's to buy in America like that's not happening but he's like yeah you wouldn't have heard of it because I did it and I'm a spy

You're like, no, you're not. So, Sean, like, Jeff knows him from, like, high school or something, whatever. But Sean has a security company, which, again, is, like, him in his mom's house. So under the guise of his new security company, he decides to take on his contract to attack Nancy Kerrigan in some way. So he hires two other idiots, Derek Smith and Shane Stant, Derek Smith is a guy who does the logistics and drives a getaway car. Sean is his nephew, and he does the actual attack on his hearing. So they talk about it for a few weeks.

They get together. There's obviously, like, so many things you can track. Like phone calls and, like, wiring $6,000 to someone. You know, just, like, very obvious things that will, the police will find in four seconds when they're looking at you to see if you did this. they have some ideas like let's kill her or let's cut her Achilles and like okay well all those things can't do any of those things like what you know what what what should we do we decided to take out her knee of her dominant leg which is her right leg so she cannot land which makes sense because like

it's not going to like you can't also like if you're wearing figure skates I'm like I can even get to your Achilles you know I'm not going to like what are they going to do like hatchet it it's she's wearing like a complicated footwear so they're going to they're going to bash her in the knee so she can't land on her right leg and won't be able to compete in the you U.S. Nationals and in the Olympics, which are happening in February. So that's what they decided to do. Again, like, Tanya is like, she says stuff like, oh, I just like confirmed that Nancy was going to be in certain places or whatever.

Like she goes back and forth on like what she's like confessing to when it gets to it. But technically at the, by this point, they hire Sean to be her bodyguard, even though he's never actually been a bodyguard, even though he says he has a security company, because is they put a fake threat to Tanya so that it'll be out there that people are trying to hurt figure skaters. Brilliant. Brilliant. Right?

So there's this like mastermind criminal out in the loose trying to hurt figure skaters. Everybody should be careful. Up your security. Hire Sean. He will help you. So they hire him, all part of their ruse. And he, they, Jeff sends $6,500 to Shane. To Derek, Derek and Shane, the uncle, nephew, but they're like the same age.

They're not like that far apart, you know, who are going to actually do the attack. So first, they try doing Cape Cod where Nancy practices. But when they get there, she's not there because, like, no one checked to see if she's going to be there. She's already on her way to the U.S. championships. And so they end up, like, he's almost running out of money. They do things like they have Tanya call the rink to see when Nancy's going to be practicing. because the practices are open, which is cool. So you could be like, each skater gets like two hours to practice on like the ice of the championship.

So you can go and watch them, which sounds awesome. You can watch them do their routine a bunch of times. So they do that and then they end up in Cape Cod. They can't figure it out. They like take like a bus and like a weird plane to get to Detroit where the championship is happening where they're going to actually end up doing the attack because they couldn't figure it out in Massachusetts. And they probably didn't have expense reports. So they're probably using this $6,500.

So they're doing this for free by the time they get to her. Oh, the money's gone. Yes, 100%. Because they're using it to fly themselves around and, like, yes. And I'm sure they're... Probably eating a bunch of eye hops. Yep. Mm-hmm.

I have like sticking eggs every morning. Yes. Yeah. So Derek and Shane are both in Detroit, which is where the championships are. And they do this thing. I think it's in the movie, but they're like so fucking stupid. They have a rental car and they're a state. I think I can't remember and I couldn't do it.

I didn't spend enough time looking at this. I should have. But whether it's in Cape Cod or in Detroit, but in one of those places, they rent a car and to not look suspicious, they move every hour to a different parking spot. But they don't. But like, there's obviously cameras.

So like when the FBA goes there, there's a camera of these two idiots parked and then every hour moving their car so that they don't look suspicious. Don't want to hire these guys. So now they're in Detroit. It's January 6th, 1994. Nancy is practicing. She's done with her practice for like two hours on the ice.

There's a camera crew following her around because everyone's getting interviewed. They're excited about the Olympics, all the things. And Nancy comes off the ice. She is wearing this little white thing, has her hair up and her scrunchy, and she puts on her, like, skate protector cover things. And the camera kind of pans away because the interview is a little bit over. The camera's going to come back later once she's, like, on the ground. But as soon as the camera is gone.

Shane kind of sneaks up behind her because he just walked in. It's because you could just walk in. So Shane just walks in. He's wearing like a big coat. He has a good telescopic, like baton. The police baton. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he can like make it bigger.

He smacks her in the back of her leg and runs away. It's like her lower right thigh where he ends up hitting her. And because he's stupid, he planned to go out of the back door, but did not check to see if that door was locked. It was locked. So he runs at the back door. door, which is locked, and they kind of get through it. So he runs to another door, which is also locked, but that door is the glass. So he, like, crashes through the glass and, like, rolls out into the parking lot where Derek has the car and then they run away. So ridiculous.

That's stupid. So the camera's still there. The camera comes back, and this is a famous clip you see of Nancy on the ground crying, going, why, why, why? Totally fair. She feels terrible because she's got smashed in the leg. She ended up being bruised. in like some of her tendons and she had to miss the championships but she did make it to the Olympics so they're like oh there must like who who was out there attacking who would attack me secure again and the answer is tanya harding like there's the dumbest guy in the FBI I could figure that out yeah of course probably talking about so they start to get like um surveilled, like, pretty much right away. The FBI starts following Jeff and Tanya, and they end up getting arrested. And, of course, they all, like, immediately turn on each other.

You know, it takes like an hour for them to be like, I'll tell you everything. The plan, again, was her to win gold medals, get more sponsorships and, you know, make Sean's, like, security company a big deal, all those things that that does not happen. I can imagine during the interrogation, at least somebody one time had to say, this is pretty much the most evidence we've ever had against anybody ever. It's so clear to all of us in the whole world. And like, she's going to say that she didn't know, but she knew in some way or not. And of course, Sean had also, like, secretly recorded all the conversations as leverage.

Of course, you did. You know, and of course, there was, like, a huge money trail. So by January 18th, which is like two weeks later, we're between the championships and the Olympics, Tanya is saying, well, I don't think Jeff is innocent. Like, I guess I'd say not innocent, you know. The Olympics are going to be on February 25th again in Lilleyhammer, Norway. Both women go.

Nancy Kerrigan, I think she does, she ends up, Aksana Bayouille is gold, Nancy Kerrigan is silver, and then Chen Lu gets the bronze. So Nancy Kerrigan, you know, does great, better than she did the last time. She does it. Tanya gets eighth. And it's really sad. Like, so the terrible book I read ended before the Olympics.

In I, Tanya, if you don't know what happens, you think we're going to get a redemption. Like you think she's going to do really well. And you're like really like nervous and excited. Like it's very well done that they want you to be, you know. But that is the one where her shoelace breaks in the middle of her thing. and she starts crying and she stops her routine and she puts her shoe up on the thing from the judges and is like nobody will help me all my stuff is terrible just everything's terrible and and she's crying and she gets 8th so um in the next couple weeks they're going to all be arrested and all be tried and all get you know get

time jeff is going to get he gets two years in prison and he has to apologize which nancy carrigan says later like okay his apology was dumb and like I don't believe him so who cares you know kind of kind of silly but so he does that all the boobs are given 18 months so each of the guys get 18 months for their um participation Tanyak is is a guilty of a felony of lying to prosecutors

because she was like oh I didn't know then like I did like all the things she gets probation and some like a couple hundred thousand other fines and community service the guy who did it got 18 months Wow that seems like I know You attacked somebody with a police baton I know

I just feel like it should be more I mean just breaking the window to exit Alone should have been like enough of a felony To get 18 months for I'm like I hope There's someone who like has it in the memory of him like Barreling out the door

I know I know I think that might be why I thought it was a fact guy because I remember that part and was like that seems like something you've waddled into. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. She's also, Tanya's also going to lose her last US championship title as well. So by June, like she's never, she's not going to be able to be able to figure to get again. It's pretty much like a she's like a can't do it for all the reasons. She has a couple of jobs like she becomes a wrestler, you know, by July 1984 of course, there's a sex tape of her and Jeff, which like,

no one wants that. No one, no one, no one, um, out there and like stills for midder and penthouse, like things like that.

Um, she's still so young, you know, um, and the next, the years after that, I don't know, like what she did mostly for money,

but she is like a, you know, a sealess celebrity. She's, she was on shows like the weakest link. She was on a show called 15 minutes of fame. And one of the other contestants was Cato Kaelin. Oh, yeah.

Come on, you know, um, in 2002, um, in 2002, she was pretty good at it. Because, you know,

by the by she's still a fucking great athlete you know. Did she box dust and diamond or am I thinking of something different? She may have. That sounds like a memory that I didn't make up. Yeah. In oh this is cool.

In 2009, she set a new land speed record for a vintage gas coop with a speed of 97.177 miles per hour driving a 1931 Ford Model A. That seems really dangerous. But yeah.

I know. That's cool. In 2018, she was third on Dancing with the Stars, which seems cool as well. And now she just, I think she still is in Oregon and like kind of does whatever she does to make money. There's also, you know, the men have dispersed. I think one of them has since passed. It might be Sean. Yeah. Sean's a dad. Yeah. And then Nancy, you know, had her a little bit of fame as well. You know, she did her. I'm sure she, she did some professional skating, you know, too. And again, it was on, like, SNL and did some parades and stuff. Because obviously, like, made her into more of a hero because she's been attacked.

Yeah. But she's also, you know, a good figure skater, but have that leg up with that family that loved her. I did see, like, relatively recently, I want to say, like, in the past, like, five years. Like an interview thing with Tanya Harding. And, yeah, she's a rough, gruff woman. Like, I think, I think in, like, she's just still smoking and, like, shooting rabbits out of her truck and, like, fussing like a sailor. Like, you know.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That's good way to phrase. How sad that that talent. And not that it was wasted on her, because, like, she still did it. But just that, like, that she couldn't.

I don't think the talent was wasted on her. but I think that the fact, like, she wasn't able to do as much as she could have done with better support. Yes. You know? Yeah. So. Yeah. But that was a big part of it, too, was like, again, Nancy Perrigan, everybody thought she was rich.

She was rich. She really did. I thought that until. Like, the week. Yeah. And then you see Nancy Kerrigan with that blue eye thing. Tanya, but yeah. Yeah.

Or Tanya. Yeah. And it's just like, this doesn't look like the, you're not the look we're looking for. Which is also the, what they told me when I was six or 17 applied at Abercrombie and Fitch, they're like, you're not what we're looking for. That's the best. For the best, you would end up on Epstein Island. It would have been, it would have been. Probably.

Probably. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, that's it. That's my fun women's history, Olympic story. That is a fun story. It is tragic for. well but I don't know

there's nobody to really feel bad for except Nate's Perrigan so like I don't know I don't know I don't know what I'm going to go with that She's fine you know Like I felt like she'll live for her but also like this made her famous Yeah Yeah yeah It works out for everybody

Yeah Jeff Belouly also Such a stupid last name So stupid Oh my god well did you know that I spent the last six months in Russia Has a spy No you didn't is it I did

It's top secret I'm telling you But also, I can't prove it because it's top secret, but also I'm telling you, but also I definitely did. He just looks like the kind of guy that you just really hope doesn't sit next to you on a plane. Exactly. He's going to smell bad. He's going to fart. He's going to take up half the seat. He's going to talk the whole time about being a spy.

He's going to be a shuddy breath telling me about this. Yeah, it's going to be just an awful lot around. There's some people who just look like they have dingleberries all the time. He's one of them. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing Taylor. was very, very fun.

Brought back some really fun memories. I know how fun. Yeah, that concludes my Olympic coverage for 2006. It's fantastic. Do we have anything to sign off on? I have one thing. I think during our, oh, your one about the Carlos de Jekyll, we were laughing about kids learning how to do like war crimes in camp.

and our friend Nadine wrote in because we said kids are building IUDs we meant IEDs but she was laughing at the idea of a bunch of kids

building IUDs like for women I must have died probably I would I would have mistaken that and how funny

I just how funny that would be that building like there's a little tiny IUDs yeah weird but that's it

that was funny she was she said that she was laughing and it's like, oh, I'm glad we could bring you joy. I'm missing up. There's probably so many of those also in the past. I know. I probably did it in a test hour, so let us know. Just laugh at us. We're just having a good time. But yeah, if you have any thoughts or ideas, send us an email,

Doomed Defelpod at gbill.com on Instagram, Doom to FillPod, all of the socials. We will answer and talk to you and we're excited to hear from you. And thank you to everyone who listens. We appreciate it. Appreciate it very much. Please do write to us. We do read those and love those. So thank you.

And thank you, Taylor, for sharing. Welcome. Sweet. Set it off there.