RedHanded - Episode 242 - Tonya Harding: Cold as Ice

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

What would you do if you put in all the hard work, pushing yourself to the pinnacle of your sport, and you still didn’t get the recognition you deserved? Would you give up?  Would you take matters into your own hands and get a bitch kneecapped as she walked back to her changing room? Or would your ex-husband do it and throw you under the bus? Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS7023l3QBw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFZs1o_e6hI https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p08yrl5s/storyville-price-of-gold https://believermag.com/remote-control/ https://www.vulture.com/2017/12/a-fact-checked-guide-whats-true-and-whats-not-in-i-tonya.html Become a patron: Patreon Order a copy of the book here (US & Canada): Order on Wellesley Books Order on Amazon.com Order a copy of the book here (UK, Ireland, Europe, NZ, Aus): Order on Amazon.co.uk Order on Foyles Follow us on social media: Instagram Twitter Visit our website: Website Contact us: Contact See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Sport edition. The swimsuit edition.

Red Handed Sports. Yeah, an interesting old pivot, but you know what? I've wanted to do it for ages. I know you have. And it's our show, and I can do what I want. You absolutely can. Now, I also thoroughly wanted to do this show after I watched a fantastic film based on it, which we'll come back to later. So before we get on with today's show i just want to tell you a little bit about what's been going on this month over on red handed's patreon we've been churning out so much content like it is some sort of delicious buttery product that you can spread all over your toast and all over your eyes and your ears and your face and

wherever else you want to put it there's been so much going on if you want to hear us talking about people like jesse smollett and what's been so much going on. If you want to hear us talking about people like Jesse Smollett and what's been going on with him and his empire shenanigans, or the update on Sherry Papini that literally made me scream, or if you want to hear our take on the cannibal himself, Joe Metheny, Mr. Sloppy Joe, then, yeah, head on over to patreon.com slash redhanded right now, sign up to become a member, and feast yourself on that buttery goodness.

So the world of figure skating was not and is not fair. Unlike most sports, it's not just about being the best. Do you know why it's called figure skating? No. Because when the skaters are skating, they make marks on the ice, right? And one of the ways they are judged is whether they can get it in the same line. So the judges will sometimes get up and look on the ice and look for the figures, like a figure of eight, for example, and how many times they've done it

or whether they've got it in the same line every time. Interesting. Yeah, I know. Look, Red Handed Sports, Sports Edition. So yeah, it's not like other sports. You can't just be the best and that's enough. For example, if you're the fastest person to run 100 meters, then you're the winner. If your team scores the most points in a game of rugby, you guessed it, you've won. But if you jump the highest, land the best tricks and put in the best performance

at a figure skating competition, you could come first, second, or even dead last. Because figure skating is subjective. It's an art, not a science. So what would you do if you put in all the hard work, pushing yourself to the pinnacle of your sport, and you still didn't get the recognition that you felt you deserved? What if you ran the 100 meters in record time but you didn't get the gold because your outfit was deemed too tacky? Would you give up? Would you keep competing and accept that you would always be second best? Or would you take matters into your own hands and get a bitch kneecapped as she walked back to her changing room? Tonya Harding was born in Portland, Oregon on the 12th of November 1970. The Hardings weren't her wealthy family, actually extremely far

from it and the phrase that often gets used when people talk about Tonya, they'll say that she was born on the wrong side of the tracks but here at Red Handed Sports Edition, we don't beat around the bush, we don't mince our words. Tonya and her family were working class and they were poor. Her dad, Al, struggled to hold down a consistent job and worked as everything from an apartment manager to a shopkeeper at a tackle and bait store. This made Tonya's mum, LaVonne, who worked as a waitress, the family's breadwinner. Family life wasn't exactly stable for Tonya and financial pressure on LaVon quickly translated into parental pressure on Tonya. And it wasn't just the pressure to do well at school or to get a job.

It was pressure to succeed in something that the Harding family spent a lot of their limited money on. And that was figure skating. Tonya Harding first clambered onto the ice aged just three years old and she was clearly a natural. On top of this natural talent, even as a toddler, she had an athletic build, which I find such an odd phrase to describe a toddler, but that is what everybody says. Imagine this little like hench toddler. I say that though, when I was in South Africa, one of my friend's babies,

she's not even my friend, she's a friend of a friend, so it's completely outrageous for me to say that, but I took one look at that baby's feet and I was like, you've got to put her in ballet. What do a ballet baby's feet look like? It's all about your turnout. So if you're naturally going to be at an advantage as ballet, you'll probably already walk like a duck. Oh, I see. And her feet were like a duck, which for walking, terrible. Ballet, exactly what you want.

Wow, there you go. Sports edition. And she had very high, very high arches as well. So yeah, terrible. Ballet, exactly what you want. Wow, there you go. Sports edition. And she had very high arches as well. So yeah, sports. So yeah, Tonya's a little fucking hench toddler clambering about on the ice. And she was also showing, very early on, a determination to be the best. And the fact that the Hardings were poor meant that every second that Tonya spent on the ice, especially considering that every second on the ice cost a lot of money, had to count.

In fact, her mum, LaVonne, was so strict about Tonya making the most of her time on the ice that little Tonya wasn't even allowed to leave for bathroom breaks. If she needed to go, she had to go on the ice. I'm always really fascinated by kids who start things at like three years old. And they're like, oh, from the second they picked up that trumpet, we knew they were a star. Am I really good at something I just wasn't given when I was three? Possibly. I think it's just for every kid that picked up a trumpet age three and like blew everyone away. There were a fucking thousand kids that picked up a trumpet age three and failed catastrophically yeah but maybe they were picking up the wrong trumpet

100 that's it that's down to parent that's for our next podcast hannah red-handed parenting don't do it and i think that's the challenge is finding the thing that your kid might be good at and also what they want to do but also can you just be good at something if you just work really hard mmm don't know it's like the ballet baby kids ballet baby feet ballet baby feet yeah that little kid

will be at an unfair disadvantage to everyone else in her class you gotta have a little look at your kid and be like what do you look like

you would be good at well right exactly and then you gotta force them to do it and piss himself on the ice that's gonna be my school of parenting oh I fucking don't doubt it for a second Exactly. And then you've got to force them to do it and piss themselves on the ice. That's going to be my school of parenting.

Oh, I fucking don't doubt it for a second. The thing is, it's already happened to me now too much. That's what my parents did to me, but I failed at every musical instrument because they didn't realise that their child was quite tone deaf, clearly. So I don't know. I guess they just let me talk and now I do that for a living so I guess it all worked out fine I used to be in debate club oh yeah me too oh great that was the best time ever but no I will be an incredibly intense tiger mother I won't be able to not but let's get back to Lavon tiger mother Lavon because by the mid-80s Tonyaa Harding, now a teenager, had shot her way onto the US competitive figure skating scene.

In 1986, she competed in her first US National Championships, a journey that was actually filmed by Tonya, you can see a lot about her character, and you also see quite a lot of the strained relationship with her mum. At one point, Lakau captures the following phone call between Tonya and Lavon. Hi, Mom. I got six. Yeah, Lavon. Yeah. No, that's good, because now I get my international. And I get to go to sports festivals and everything. No, I did it, but I did a looping besides. I know. Yes, it does.

I got half credit for it, Mom. Yep. Okay, love you too. Bye. What a bitch. My 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, she goes, you did terrible, you know that.

Said you sucked. And I said, Mom, I goes, you did terrible, you know that. I 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, no, it didn't. And she goes, well, just as long as you tried. And I said, I did. That is so incredibly reminiscent of my childhood trauma. Yeah, I've had some pretty similar conversations.

The best bit is when she's like, I caught six and she's like, so the rest of them were shit too. Oh my God. Yeah, just in case it isn't 100% clear and you don't share the trauma that Saru and I do. What's happening is Tonya's telling her mum that she's come sixth in a national competition

and her mum's like, well, it's not good enough. Call me when it's first. Tonya is trying to competition and her mum's like well it's not good enough call me when it's first Tonya is trying to explain to her mum that sixth in a national competition is actually pretty good but Lavon's not having any of it and she remains pretty unimpressed so obviously it's pretty easy to feel like Tonya is being treated unfairly by her mum but soon that feeling would include the entire US figure skating association as well unfortunately Unfortunately for Tonya, she just didn't fit the image that the USFSA wanted representing their sport. Due to her family's tight finances, Tonya competed in dresses that she had made herself. Her style was loud, proud and in-your-face. To complete the look Tonya would turn up

with eccentrically painted nails, loads of blusher, loads of eyeshadow. It's very 80s because it was the 80s. Yeah, I think it's when you look at pictures of her, which I have spent a lot of time in the last few days doing. It is the 80s, but some of her competitors, particularly a lady we'll go on to talk about later, she looks like she's from the now times. And Tonya looks like she's from the 80s. Yes, yes. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle.

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Start your free trial today. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution.

I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. And the judges didn't like it. They thought it was all quite tacky.

But the thing that really rubbed the USFSA the wrong way was that Tonya really performed to classical music. And that's what the figure skating community was used to. She preferred, instead, to skate to rock music, like ZZ Top. Which, these days, they're all fucking at it. She was just ahead of her time. Even in gymnastics, it's all modern stuff now.

I can absolutely see it from her point of view. I can't afford a new dress every competition, so I might as well try and do something different because I can't do what they're asking me to do. The outfits that she wore, they're not like she's skating around in a fucking burlap sack. No, no. She's made incredibly

fantastic outfits to wear they're just not what the judges like they don't like her style and it just so happens like we said in the intro that this was a sport where the way you looked and how you dressed and the music you were skating to was all very important the image was as much a part of the performance it seems seems, as the athleticism. And prejudice against Tonya for her background and how she presented herself was more than enough to actually influence the judges' scores. So what we're talking about here is, they're not just like, we don't really like that Tonya because look how 80 she is in the 80s.

It's actually fundamentally affecting the way they mark her. Now it's hard to explain in this audio format just how differently Tonya skated compared to her fellow competitors. And sure you could probably just go have a quick google but for those of you who are currently listening to the show while operating heavy machinery we'll do our best to describe it. Tonya pushed hard against the ice with every movement of her body. In old footage of her, you can actually see the muscles in her legs and arms flexing and rippling as she moved around the ice. It's incredibly impressive.

But those muscles didn't actually help Tonya's image either. She didn't look like a little fairy on the ice. She was ripped. She looked like an athlete. And the judges didn't like Tonya skating because it didn't look effortless. And they would often actually give higher scores to less impressive skaters who performed less difficult routines, but just in a more ladylike way. Welcome to this episode of Hannah Makes Everything About Ballet. Darcy Bussell,

arguably the most famous British ballerina alive today. The whole beginning of her career was this because she looks muscular, which like ballet is one of those incredibly. What's the word when like things don't go together, but they try and make it go together? Like, so, for example, they're like, oh, ballet, you have to be really, really thin and really, really strong. But I don't want to see a single muscle on your arm. It's contradictory. Exactly. Yeah. Oxy moronic.

Yeah. Yeah. All of those ones. Tony's experiencing the same thing absolutely but unlike Darcy Bustle she doesn't go on to conquer the Royal Academy yes, because I think that's the thing I am not an ice skater I'm not a figure skater

I couldn't even make it around Central Park ice rink once without holding onto the slide I didn't even make it all the way around because I was so distressed distressed is the word I I was like, I fucking hate this. And what was very clear was how incredibly strong you need to be to be able to do that. So at this point, it's clear. Tonya's being unfairly treated at home. She's also being unfairly treated in this sport that she spends the majority of her time focusing on. A sport that she fucking pissed

on the eyes for as a kid to get good at. So can you guess what happens next? At this point any long-term spooky bitches and listeners with narcissistic mothers will see a very obvious development coming over the horizon. If the skating judges and even her own mother weren't going to give Tonya the validation she needed. Maybe someone else would. Age 15, Tonya started dating 17-year-old Jeff Gillooly. And Gillooly, despite having a very unusual name, was everything that the 15-year-old Tonya felt like she needed. He was a bit older than her, he had a job and a car, he told her that she was very beautiful and talented, all of the things that her mother would never say.

People talk a lot of shit about Jeff, and he deserves every word of it, unfortunately. He was regularly, verbally and physically abusive towards Tonya, and he rarely let her out of his sight. He worked stacking shelves in a local warehouse. Otherwise, he didn't really do very much at all. This has led some people to argue that Jeff only saw Tonya as a paycheck. Maybe he saw it as an investment, but if he cared about anything, it definitely wasn't Tonya's feelings or her well-being. All he wanted was to keep her on the ice. I think that's the thing that makes people feel like he's in it for the paycheck or the investment because he's so

invested in her doing the sport. Do it, do it do it do it like he is as determined as she is to keep her on the ice after two years of dating a 17 year old tonya dropped out of high school to pursue figure skating full-time supported by jeff so now she had her full attention on skating tonya harding started training with a new coach called doy Teachman, which is a pretty outstanding name for an educator of any kind, let alone a coach. And with Doi by her side, Tonya started to climb the competitive ladder. She landed her first podium finish at the US National Championships,

coming third in the 88-89 season. And then she went on to win Skate America and the Nations Cup the next year. As her skating career developed, so did her relationship with Jeff, and in 1990, the pair who were now living together got married. For better or worse, Jeff was now fully entangled in Tonya's life. In 1991, Tonya Harding, with the ever-present and ever-controlling Jeff behind her, completed the best competitive year of her life,

starting at the US National Championships, where she created figure skating history. Here comes Tonya Harding. She now, Tonya Harding, with a chance to win a trip to Germany. And there's such a tremendous difference. If you finish third, you skate in Munich. If you finish fourth, you stay at home and watch on television. She was second after the original program, 20 years old, from Portland, Oregon. Wound up seventh in the Nationals last year.

And she's a very powerful skater. She's tiny. She reminds you somewhat of Liz Manley of Canada. A little bit of Janet Lin of the United States. Great power, great speed, and great athletic ability. And the question is whether three moves into the program, she will do a triple axel. First, a triple lutz. And now the question is whether she will become the first American

to attempt and complete a triple axel jump. We will know that here whether she tries it or not. Good girl! Oh, isn't that great? The first time an American, only Midori Ito, has completed a triple axel in competition. Oh, how nice! How terrific! As you just heard, on the 16th of February 1991, Tonya Harding became the first American woman and second woman ever to land a triple axel in competition. I have to be honest, when I watched that,

I felt quite teary and felt quite emotional because she just looks so fucking happy she looks so ecstatic and I don't I don't watch figure skating I don't know but I don't know if you're meant to do it and then sort of look nonplussed about it and she's exactly what you're supposed to do and she does it and rightfully you know good for fucking her she's like yes yes! It just makes you so happy to see her. Yeah, absolutely. I love stuff like that. And it's hard to explain what a triple axel is, especially if you don't know much about figure skating, which I don't. But in essence, it was the perfect jump for Tonya Harding. It required explosive power,

incredible speed and nerves of steel, all things that she had in absolute abundance. And this fact, I love this fact so much because to put into perspective how fucking impressive it is what Tonya Harding did in 1991, that when they were filming Tonya Harding's 2017 biopic, I, Tonya, the footage that shows margot robbie quote unquote landing the triple axle had to be shot using cgi because even decades later they still couldn't find a skate double who could land the triple axle it's quite honestly a superhuman feat is it like and this is just me dumbing it down incredibly jumping in the air and turning your body entirely three times before you land again? Yes.

In a very layman's way of explaining it. Yeah, and why it's so impressive is to get that. To be in the air long enough to turn your body that many times and to be able to turn your body that many times. To have pushed yourself off ice rather than, you know, it's not a trampoline. And then land and not fall on your arse. Yeah, it's incredibly, incredibly, incredibly difficult. Fucking incredible. Like getting that amount of power from ice to stay in the air that long.

It's mad. It's superhuman. It is. Watch the video of her doing it. And I, I don't know, I challenge you not to get a bit misty eyed. It's, yeah. I don't know, God knows how many times I've watched that clip, but every time I'm still like, yes, Tonya. I also think that's why it's so difficult not to like her,

like even after everything that happens. And, you know, maybe feel free to disagree with me, listeners at home, because that is okay. But I love her. I just have such a soft spot for her. So landing this element, as I discovered they call it in skating, gave the judges no choice but to give Tonya first place at the US Nationals. Because remember, they don't want to score her highly, they don't like the way she presents herself. But being the first ever American woman

and the second woman ever to land this triple axel in competition, even they can't take it away from her. So they have to give her first place and that moment would catapult Tonya Harding into the spotlight and transform her life forever and with the world now watching Tonya went on to land the triple axel again at the world championships and that got her second place making her the second best skater on the planet, just behind long-time face of American figure skating, Christy Yamaguchi. All of this and another first place at Skate America was enough that Tonya Harding, white trash or not, could no longer be ignored.

And whether the stuffy figure skating community liked it or not, she had qualified to represent America on the biggest stage of all. The 1992 Winter Olympics. You bet they fucking hated that. Because now, she's not just, like, in their eyes, embarrassing their sport in America. She's taking it on the world stage. Taking that show on the road. Exactly. With the 80s hair and the eyeshadow and the nails and the outfits.

You know what? I will always stand in defense of a crimp. I will. I love it. You know what? I also love a crimp. I love a crimp. Yeah.

Sleep with braids. It's great. And then wake up with crimped hair. It's beautiful. Also, if you just crimp the underneath of your hair, it gives you loads of volume. And then you just have the top bit smooth and no one can tell. I'm just looking bemused. I have no idea how that would work. However, although she had now qualified to represent the US of A at the Winter Olympics,

in the months between her record-breaking year and the 1992 Winter Olympics, just as she had hit the pinnacle of her career, things started to fall apart. Tonya's relationship with Jeff, which hadn't exactly started well, had become even more toxic. Friends and family knew that their relationship had become increasingly violent, and Jeff's influence on Tonya's skating had gone from financial benefactor to lead weight around her neck. In June 1991, Tonya filed for divorce and got a restraining order against Jeff, saying that he'd wrenched her arm

and threatened her with a shotgun. She then got briefly engaged to another man, which ended abruptly, and then three months later, in October 1991, Tonya got back together with Jeff. So all of this is going on behind the scenes in Tonya's personal life and then in her not personal life, her exterior life, there's enormous media focus on her too and that's

a lot of pressure for anyone and understandably things started to slip. Her coach at the time, still Doy Teachman, said in a BBC documentary that going into the 1992 Winter Olympics, Tonya's training schedule had become erratic. And Tonya herself said that at the time she was, quote, missing all her jumps and she'd gained some weight. All in all, whether it was the media pressure, Jeff being a dick, or both, the reality was that Tonya went into the 92 Winter Olympics drastically underprepared.

So when you keep all of that in mind and then look at what she went on to achieve at those Olympics, it's actually super impressive, but it's often downplayed by everyone, including Tonya herself. Tonya claimed that one of her blades broke off in practice and it was poorly repaired. All of the documentaries and news reports at the time seemed to focus exclusively on talking about how out of shape she looked

and how off her form was. But for all of that bad form and off the ice distractions, Tonya Harding came fourth. So what if she didn't land that triple axel? Tonya Harding represented the USA at the highest level of her sport and narrowly missed out on a medal. So as you can tell, we at Red Handed think that getting a fourth at the Olympics on your first attempt at the Olympics is nothing to be sniffed at. But the same couldn't be said for Tonya. And that's probably because I'm not an athlete, is why I'm like, well, fourth's great. But also, maybe I'm just blocking out all my childhood trauma where fourth wasn't great.

Well, also, I always find it so, maybe it's not because I'm not particularly a sports guy but you know when people don't say that on our red-handed edition of sports I know sorry but you know when like this is not a hot take at all but I do find it very funny when everyone's like oh that player's fucking shit and I was like well they are a professional football player I'm sure they must be quite good at something. Maybe some of it they're quite good at, to be a full-time professional athlete. It's not good enough. It's not good enough.

No, but the fourth place at the Olympics is pretty good going. Uh-huh. And we stand by that here on Red-Handed Sports Edition. But missing out on the podium finish hit Tonya hard. And it wasn't just mentally. That's because a fourth place finish didn't get you any of the sponsorships or ad deals that a figure skater needed to survive. It just wasn't enough. On top of this, the 92 Winter Olympics were the final hurrah for America's darling, Christy Yamaguchi,

who retired after winning her gold medal. And this left the US Figure Skating Association looking for a new face for the sport. Now, Tonya knew that a fourth place finish would mean that this face wouldn't be hers. It would, of course, be bronze medal winner and perfect ice princess, Nancy Carrigan. Nancy Carrigan is often presented as the villain of the Tonya Harding story. And it is easy to see why. She's more eloquent. She was more refined.

She was a much more traditional skater. She's not the underdog. No, she's not the underdog. However, Nancy Carrigan is not the villain of the Tonya Harding story. And she will not be the villain of red-handed dust sports, colon Tonya Harding story and she will not be the villain of red-handed dust sports colon Tonya Harding. She was another supreme athlete who put her all into becoming the best. Nancy just like Tonya was dedicated to her sport. You don't win a fucking bronze at the Olympics without being and she just had the confidence sometimes misrepresented by her villainizers as arrogance that anybody needs to get to the fucking top.

While the pair's relationship is pretty tense these days, for reasons that if you don't already know how, but we'll tell you later on, Nancy and Tonya actually used to share rooms together when they were younger and out on the road competing. So they were quite close. Most of the reasons why people see Nancy Carrigan as a baddie, quite a lot of those reasons are completely out of her control. For example, in contrast to Tonya, Nancy had a loving family who supported her and she had the elegant ladylike vibe that the US Figure Skating Association wanted. That's kind of it. She wasn't particularly rich, she wasn't preppy, she wasn't even a bitch. She just had a finesse that Tonya

didn't have. Maybe understandably, for Tonya that was pretty difficult to swallow. And to be honest, 1992 looked like it was the end for Tonya Harding. She was set to be a funny anecdote in the history of figure skating. If she was lucky, she might be remembered as the Jamaican bobsled team of figure skating. After 1992, she could no longer land the triple axel that had made her so famous. She was broke. Her and Jeff, despite being in inverted commas together, were a complete mess. She started working at a fast food restaurant, just like her mother, and it looked as if her skating days were done. But the sports gods weren't done with her yet. In 1992, to keep the Olympic flame burning away in people's hearts and

minds, it was decided that the Winter and Summer Games would alternate bi-yearly. So in the same way that the Euros and the Football World Cup happen every two years. Basically they're like, how can we milk this for all it's worth? So every two years. And that meant rather than the next Winter Olympics happening in 1996, they would instead be happening in 1994, meaning that Tonya Harding had one last chance to be crowned the undisputed greatest female skater in the world. And she couldn't afford to let that chance slip away. In late 1992, Tonya Harding started training again with her childhood coach, Diane Rawlingson, and according to both of them, she trained harder than she'd ever trained before. They both claim that Tonya even carried sacks of coal up big hills like Rocky,

that she flipped logs over end over end, ran with buckets of water on her shoulders like she was in Mulan, and even promised to stop performing to ZZ Top, all in an effort to get a place at the 1994 Olympics. But before that, as we all know, as newly inducted ice skating lovers, to get to the Olympics, Tonya needed to place on the podium at the 1994 US National Championship. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey

to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus.

Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Laney Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted

to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. There's a lot of mystery surrounding exactly what happened in the run-up to the 1994 National Championships, but we can talk about some things that we do know.

Firstly, we know for a fact that Jeff was back in the picture full-time and that Tonya was calling him her husband. And this isn't just Jeff sliding his way back in now that Tonya looked like she was a good bet for the Olympics again, although that probably had something to do with it. This recoupling was a deliberate move from Tonya to appear more stable, something which a US Figure Skating Association judge had suggested would make her more likeable and more likely to qualify for the 1994 Olympics. It's not top model. It's not Miss America.

I mean, it kind of feels like it does it does it kind of feels like miss america on ice that's what it is exactly feels like that yeah you need a boyfriend tanya you look fucking crazy take some of that eyeshadow off get yourself a boyfriend and no more zz top exactly and then maybe you'll make it on the bachelor yeah and she's like fine whatever the fuck you need because my back is now all coaly from all the coal I've been carrying around. So there's better fucking payoff. And the second thing we know about the lead up to the 94 US Nationals was that Tonya Harding had turned up in the best physical form of her life to this competition. She was 23.

She had matured as a skater and she looked absolutely unstoppable. It's all that coal and buckets of water yeah i mean if anyone can do a training montage mate it's tonya harding tonya harding she should fucking get on and i don't know if she's already on this creating some sort of i tonya boot camp that shit would sell and you get to do it with 80s hair and loads of eyeshadow on she'll come to your house and do your hair and makeup for you and then at the end you get a manicure yeah and then she'll chase you up And then at the end you get a manicure. Yeah, and then she'll chase you up the hill.

Dream, dream. I'd be fucking terrified. That's how you get super fit, running away from Tonya Harding. I think we should make this happen. Let's create the next fucking, I don't know, workout DVD starring Tonya Harding. And bags of coal. So, yeah, by 1994, after her intense workout, she had turned up even more muscular than she had been in 91.

And from an outside perspective, it honestly looked like if Tonya Harding jumped hard enough, she could probably have shattered the ice. On top of this, Tonya had worked on her elegance and her grace. She wasn't just going all out to try and land the triple axel again. Instead, she was putting together more balanced and sophisticated routines designed to get her maximum points. I think this is the other thing. We have to remember that by 94, when she's doing this and she's realized, I need to stop just fighting the system. If I want to win, I need to play within the system in order to win. And she's

creating these more balanced routines she's 23 like last time when she would have been 21 like how immature are you you are going to be like fuck the system fuck my mum I'm going to do what I want to do and she's learned a lot she's come a long way up until this point although I'm sad to hear that she had to change and then that brings us on to the last thing that we know happened at the 94 US Nationals. And this, if you know this case, is probably the moment you've been waiting for. Why? Why? Why? Why?

I don't know, it's a hard, hard black stick. Something really, really hard. Help me. The whimpers that rocked the 90s there, I could, like, I recognised that clip so, like like it really sort of set something off oh my god it's so it's so awful like the way Nancy's screaming and just the it's the pain but also I think you can hear when she's shouting no no no no no when they're trying to move her I think it's the pain but also just the realization she knows that it's just fucked. It's fucked. And I am by no means drawing any sort of comparison between what happened to me and my ankle and Nancy Carrigan. But that moment you

realize that you cannot move your ankle. And I am not a figure skater. I just wanted to be able to walk around. It's pretty horrifying. It's pretty horrifying. Do you know who Nancy Kerrigan reminds me of? She reminds me of Kelly from Saved by the Bell. Yeah, exactly. That's, if you haven't googled her yet, picture Kelly from Saved by the Bell, that's Nancy Kerrigan. Yeah, exactly. So those are, of course, what you just heard, the screams of Nancy Kerrigan, Tonya Harding's main competition for a place on the Olympic team, screaming in agony. Why, I hear you cry, what happened to poor Nancy? Well, she's screaming because she'd just been hit hard in the right thigh, severely damaging her quadricep tendon and taking away any chance of her competing in the 1994 US National Championships. According to Nancy, she had been walking away from the rink

after a practice session in Detroit when a well-built Hispanic man smashed into her right thigh with an extendable police baton. This man then ran towards a locked glass door, which he smashed through with his head. And then he jumped into a car and sped off into the distance. And the thing that's the most obvious when you look at the footage, which, you know, give it a YouTube, is just sheer confusion.

Nobody really knows what's happened. Nobody knows where the attacker went, why he did it, or what in the name of Tor Vellandine was going on. And you might think, like we have so many times before, that we're about to clear all of those questions up for you. And we are. Kind of. Before we kind of do that, I think they should make another film. Another bring it on film. But it should be bring it on Skate America. And it's this story.

You know that my favourite form of entertainment is competitive children. You do. I mean, I do. You do like that. And I do know that. It's my favourite. So, yes competitive children. I mean, I do. You do like that and I do know that. It's my favourite. So yes, I will watch Cheer ice skating. Absolutely. Though I think we have the fictional, we bring Gabrielle Union back.

We bring Kirsten Dunst back. Kirsten Dunst can play a great Tonya Harding. She would be very good at that. She would be very good, Tonya Harding. And then I think we do. Bring it on. Skate America. 2023. 2023.

Fantastic. Giving ourselves loads of time then to prep for that enormous project. Quick, someone get Kirsten Dunst on the phone. Stop doing Lars von Trier films and come do this. Everyone stop doing Lars von Trier films, please. Lars von Trier. Do you know what? I'm not going to watch it, but I'm going to allow it.

Continue. But I don't want to watch it. I watched some of The House That Jack Built and I had had enough. I watched all of Nymphomania. All three films of the series. I have not. Don't. You watched all

three though. I watched all three. And then decided nope. It's kind of like watching a car crash though. You're like what am I watching? Sure, sure, sure. Yeah and you can really look away, but it's not pleasant. Anyway, let's go back to Tonya Harding and we'll leave bringing on Skate America for another day. So yes, as you can see, we don't know a whole lot about what exactly happened. Even the description that Hannah just gave is just what Nancy said, but she's just been fucking attacked. What we do know, however, is that Tonya Harding went on to win the US National Championships two days later, putting her in pole position for the US Olympic team. We also know

that Nancy Carrigan, despite withdrawing from the National Championships, was also selected for the Olympic team, a symbol of just how much the US Figure Skating Association wanted her to be the face of their sport. And we also know that Nancy Carrigan completed her own one-woman comeback story to get fit for the Olympics in just six weeks, spending four weeks in rehabilitation treatment and then just two weeks back on the ice. I hurt my ankle three months ago.

I still can't stand on tiptoes. She was back on the fucking ice in four weeks. Yeah. And this thing, I know that this is the Tonya Harding story that we're telling, but the Nancy Kerrigan comeback story, that's part two. Bring it on, Skate America. Kerrigan comeback. Oh, God, Jesus Christ.

I can't stop. Tell me you wouldn't watch it, though. Of course I would watch it, but I'm an asshole. Oh, my God, and we get Kelly from Saved by the Bell to play Nancy Carrigan, whatever her name is. She must be in her 60s now. She just must be. They're all about 42 when they're filming Saved by the Bell.

We'll CGI her face. She probably got a kid then. Even better. Even better. Anyway, Kerrigan makes a comeback. But as for how and why and who conducted a scheme to bash a figure skater's leg in, well, things around that were still a little bit hazy. From the moment the news broke that Nancy Kerrigan had been attacked,

all eyes were on Tonya Harding. She was essentially the only person with any particular that Nancy Kerrigan had been attacked, all eyes were on Tonya Harding. She was essentially the only person with any particular motivation for Kerrigan to be injured and therefore unable to compete. Tonya, however, seemed just as freaked out by the whole ordeal as everyone else. What's your take on the Nancy Kerrigan situation? I'm sure it bothers a lot of people. How do you feel about it? It definitely bothers me. I know how she feels, and I feel really bad that this happened. I was looking forward to competing against her, and, you know, I just hope that she's OK. And we can hear there in the interview filmed

before Tonya had actually gone on to win the national championships that she did actually seem outwardly, genuinely worried and confused by the whole situation. And Tonya also seems genuinely disappointed that she won't have the opportunity to compete against Nancy Kerrigan. And we're not saying that Tonya saw Kerrigan as a friend, but Tonya Harding lived to prove the haters wrong. And beating Nancy Kerrigan in a fair fight was a big part of that. I do think that like in let's say like dancey sports like ice skating like gymnastics rhythmic gymnastics especially I think the sort of sportsmanship element kind of

gets deleted or not thought about as much but I do think Tonya Harding was a sportsman and she wanted a fair fight oh absolutely I think that whether your sport is reflective of that sportsmanship or not the mentality it takes for somebody to get to the top of their game like she did, the determination, the mindset she had that you have to have to be a high-performing athlete. There's no way I think Tonya would have been satisfied with just winning de facto. She wanted to win by fucking destroying Nancy Kerrigan on the ice. So after winning her second national championships, Tonya was greeted by crowds of reporters at the airport in Portland.

And while she did seem happy to have proved that she was the best, she still didn't seem satisfied with the win, saying to reporters, quote, I'm really happy, but it won't be a true crown until I get my chance with Nancy. That'll be at the Olympics. And let me tell you, I'm a whipper butt. Now, that could be considered a little bit in poor taste, given that Nancy had just got her leg bashed in. But it's not, at least in our opinion, the words of someone who wanted Nancy Carrigan injured.

I think that's the thing. Like, would you really say that if you were just ordered the hit on her? I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. I mean, it's a pretty good double bluff. But I think I've made my feelings pretty clear. I really, really, I don't think she never knew. I think she probably didn't know when she said that. Yes, let's come back to that in a moment.

For now, let's stick with Tonya because for the next few days after the championships, if we believe Tonya Harding's breakdown of events, she existed in a weird little bubble. A bubble where everyone was watching her. She'd proven all the haters wrong, and there'd been a huge controversy in her sport, which she was just as keen as everyone else to get to the bottom of. And that bubble was just about to be popped. Just days after Tonya returned home from her comeback win at the US Nationals,

a local news channel called KOIN-TV received an anonymous letter stating that Tonya Harding was directly involved in the attack on Nancy Kerrigan, along with Jeff and three other men called Sean Eckhart, Derek Smith and Shane Stant. And if you thought this story was strange before, we cannot wait to introduce you to these three. Let's start with Sean Eckhart. For reasons that will soon become clear, Sean Eckhart's life story and how he, along with Eric Smith and Shane Stant, came to be part of the Tonya Harding trilogy are unclear. So as we delve more into the murky side of this bizarre tale, we'll be relying in part on the go-to source for all things Tonya Harding, Sarah Marshall.

You might know Sarah Marshall as one of the hosts of the podcast You're Wrong About. But something really interesting and very particular about this week, Sarah Marshall's big break was in 2014 when she wrote an article on Tonya Harding called Remote Control. Sarah was the first, apart from Tonya herself, to talk about the injustices and prejudices that Harding faced because of her social status. And Sarah was also the first one to talk about how much Tonya was manipulated by domestic abuse. And over the last decade, Sarah Marshall has very much earned her crown as the definitive source for all things Tonya.

And it's thanks to Sarah's article that we're able to piece together the events that led up to Nancy Carrigan being attacked, and how Sean Eckhart was at the very centre of it. So Eckhart was 26 when Nancy's clobbering hit the headlines. He was 300 pounds, had short-cropped brown hair, and one of the worst moustaches we've seen in a very very long time. He looks like a cartoon character. That's the only way to describe him. And Eckhart had been friends with Jeff since the pair had been at grade school together and according to Eckhart he was hired by Jeff after Tonya received a death threat in 1993 while she was competing in a regional competition called the NHK Trophy. If we believe

Eckhart that this is what happened then Jeff and Tonya felt that Eckhart who ran a business called World Bodyguard Services from his parents spare bedroom was the perfect man to provide Tonya who by this point was like pretty famous she's not like a, but that he was the right person to offer her protection. However, according to the letter sent in to KOIN TV, Sean Eckhart had been hired for a much more sinister purpose, to take out Nancy Carrigan. The letter had no signature when it arrived at the TV station, but thanks to Sarah Marshall, we know that it was sent in by a woman called Patty Cook. Now, we don't know a whole lot about Patty Cook. Basically, Patty Cook seems to have known

Sean Eckhart's father, Ron Eckhart, because he would apparently often phone her to talk to her about his problems while bragging about his son's career as a counter-terrorism expert whilst also trying to have phone sex with her. So, complicated and multi-layered relationship going on there. Patty Cook apparently had never made much of Ron's sort of make-believe claims about his son.

She never really believed any of that. But then, one day, she turns on the TV and sees one of Ron's stories playing out on the news. So, after receiving the letter, Anne Schatz from KOIN-TV got in contact with Tonya, telling her that she had a letter which linked her, Jeff and Sean with the attack on Nancy. Tonya asked this journalist to fax the letter over so she could read it for herself. But Anne said the only way Tonya was going to get her eyes on it was if she agreed to come in for an interview. It's just so absurd.

You know, I mean, I travel all over the country and I never have anything happen. And I come home and, I mean, here's where I have my problems in my own hometown. I mean, gosh, I love Portland. I love the people in Portland. But, you know, why does someone want to discredit me? You know, I worked my butt off for this. And if anybody wanted to, you know, beat Nancy, it was me. Who wanted to compete against her the most? It was me. Because everyone says that she can beat me. Well, I don't believe that. I know in my heart that I can beat her.

And there is people out there that do think that I can beat her. But, you know, I didn't get the chance. You know, so who loses? I do. I lose. With the FBI getting involved, you were very quick to say, I'll cooperate, I'll tell you everything I know, which at this point isn't a whole lot, correct? Yeah, I don't know anything. I don't know

for sure anything about what's going on at all. You know, and of course I'm going to cooperate. I mean, I don't have anything to hide and I want the person to be caught as much as anybody else does. It's so sad. I know. It is sad. The first thing that's noticeable in this interview is the change in Tonya's body language. As we've talked about before in the show, she's very confident, she's fiery, she's gutsy, but you can see in this interview that quite a lot of that seems to vanish. And you heard in the clip that we just played, Tonya does defend herself, but something that doesn't come through in the audio is how scared she looks. And her eyes are constantly darting off to the left, to where Jeff was sitting and watching her

being interviewed. You can actually see Jeff's silhouette behind the interviewer in the video. As Tonya was being interviewed at KOIN-TV, Sean Eckhart was having a very different interview with John King, an investigator for the FBI. And this interview would have a much bigger impact on Tonya Harding's career. The FBI had received the very same letter from Patty Cook, and it didn't take them long to track down Sean and his buddy Derek Smith. And according to John King, it took them even less time to get Eckhart to fold like a cheap accordion. And that is a quote. Within hours of his arrest, Eckhart had told the FBI that the letter was indeed true and that he was partially responsible for the attack. However, the investigation wasn't over.

Because while Eckhart had spilled the beans, it was incredibly difficult to know which beans were real. The investigators were struck by just how delusional he was, claiming in his confession that he had had training

in counter-terrorism and worked with the Secret Service. This guy is such a fucking doofus. I know. He's telling the FBI that he works with the Secret Service. What? It's not like your dad telling fucking patty cook over the phone that you work in counter-terrorism yeah

you're telling the fbi this and they are very able to check while they investigate you for a crime that is currently completely engulfing all of the headlines so in his statement to the FBI, Eckhart said that in mid-December, Jeff had come to him for advice on stopping Tonya's rival, Nancy, in the run-up to the 1994 US National Championships. According to Eckhart, shortly after this, he'd had a call from his mate Derek Smith, who wanted to know if he'd like to move state and start an anti-terrorism training camp. Sure. However, according to Eckhart, he told Smith that he had a bigger deal to put on the table, bigger than a fucking training camp in another state.

He said that he could offer Smith good money to help him disable a figure skater. And this wasn't just for the hit because basically Eckhart told Smith that Jeff had promised him protection work for Tonya and some of her wealthy skating connections if he just carried out the attack on Nancy. Allegedly, Smith said that he wanted in on the deal and that he would even bring his nephew, Shane Stant, to help with the job. How much money does this guy think is in figure skating? Figure skating protection. Honestly. And also, why does it take three people to hit somebody in the leg? Derek Smith, now also in FBI custody, confirmed Eckhart's story.

Smith had fallen on hard times after he was discharged from the army, where he had been an intelligence analyst. When Eckhart told him that Tonya had recently received a $10,000 donation from the owner of the New York Yankees, a man who would probably need bodyguard services in the future, this offer was just too good to refuse. And the owner of the Yankees genuinely had donated that money, but he'd done it through the USFSA.

There's no evidence that Tonya had ever met this man, let alone spoken to him. But Derek Smith didn't know that. Smith had recently applied for a job as a police officer. He was enticed by the money, but he didn't want to risk getting a criminal record. So he brought his nephew Shane Stant down to Oregon for the job instead. I love that. He's like, I don't want to get a criminal record, but it's fine if my nephew gets a criminal record. So he brought his nephew Shane Stant down to Oregon for the job instead. I love that. He's like, I don't want to get a criminal record,

but it's fine if my nephew gets a criminal record. Just as you say, why does it take three people to hit someone in the leg? No idea. So while speaking to the FBI, both Smith and Eckhart confessed that on the 28th of December 1993, the two of them, along with Shane Stant, had met with Jeff to hatch the plan to attack Nancy. And Sean Eckhart, who seemingly couldn't get enough of all the attention he was getting once he'd confessed, actually then went on TV to talk about how things had played out

on the night of the meeting and what had motivated him to be a part of the scheme. He asked me if I could find him somebody, put him in touch with someone to ensure that Nancy Kerrigan didn't skate at the Nationals. Did someone say we should kill Nancy Kerrigan? It wasn't phrased like that. Jeff used the term, he just said, well, why doesn't somebody take her out? And then I immediately came to the conclusion that it might have meant, you know, some sort of, you know, some sort of something that it possibly may or may not have been. And after he said that, you know, I just popped up real quick and said,

no, we don't need to do that. You don't need to, you know, there's other things you can do to disable somebody rather than you don't need to kill them. It was sort of decided within the group that, you know, disabling her landing leg, you know, something that was not permanent, something that was recoverable. And who decided which leg? Jeff did. You know, something that was not permanent, something that was recoverable. And who decided which leg? Jeff did, her landing leg. Jeff said break her landing leg.

Yeah, the leg that she lands on. I think this is one of the problems with this case, is that these men confess very easily, but they also are quite stupid and also delusional and love attention, which is a dangerous combination in somebody confessing to things. They're astonishingly stupid. Like, I can't believe that they think they can get away with this in the 90s. It's like they think it's the 16th century.

So based on the clip you just heard, after this revelation, Tonya's attorney felt that she had no choice but to make another statement to the authorities. So on the 18th of January 1994, just weeks before she was set to go to the Olympics, Tonya Harding told the authorities in Portland, Oregon, almost exactly what they wanted to hear. After at first denying any knowledge of the attack and refusing to implicate Jeff, Tonya eventually folded, like presumably a more expensive accordion, and told them that her ex-husband Jeff and his high school friend Sean had plotted an attack on Nancy, specifically

to take her out of contention for the US Olympic team. But she also told them that she had only found out after the KOIN TV interview. And after that interview, she had directly confronted Jeff on the way home. And when she did that, Jeff punched her in the face. Tonya also told District Attorney Norman Fink, a man with the world's most punchable face, said that in the weeks since her interview, she'd learned more about the attack and that she hadn't come forward sooner

for fear that Jeff, who had threatened her with a shotgun, would kill her if she spoke out. She also told authorities that she was $109 overdrawn, something of interest given that we know she was sent $10,000 by a wealthy benefactor to help keep her skating. So yeah, I guess it's like, how are you $109 overdrawn when we know you got that money? Where did it go? Did it go to pay for this hit? Is basically what people are saying. Right.

It's like, where did that money just disappear to? Probably your incredibly abusive husband. But did he take it to pay somebody to hit somebody in the leg? Hit Nancy in the leg so that you would win the Olympics and get loads of sponsorship money? These are the questions. And it was at this point that Tonya made the decision to leave Jeff for good. She went to stay with friends. A week later, on the 26th of February, Jeff was brought in for questioning. And in disbelief that Tonya had turned on him, he spilled his own Jeff-flavoured beans on how the attack on Nancy

Kerrigan had played out. Jeff told the FBI that he'd originally spoken to Sean Eckhart in early December 93, after Tonya had placed poorly at the NHK trophy and had blamed skate politics for her poor result. According to him, the two had been chatting as friends when Eckhart wondered aloud what would happen if Nancy Kerrigan was forced to retire from the 94 US nationals in just a few weeks' time. Jeff said that he liked the idea and that he told Tonya about their plan because he thought that if she didn't know what they were going to do, she would also have been shaken by the attack. Which, Jeff's a piece of shit, but that kind of makes sense.

Oh, definitely. Yeah, like if somebody's just like going around attacking figure skaters obviously that's going to throw Tonya off her game if she doesn't know what actually happened. I think she got a death threat as well. They do say that earlier they said that the reason he first got in touch with Sean like we said earlier was because she got a death threat in 93. And he also claimed that Tonya thought it was a good plan but that she didn't believe that Eckhart could pull it off. Which Tony Tonya probably being, definitely being the smartest of this fucking posse, it's not surprising to me that she was the only one with any insight to think that Eckhart couldn't pull this off.

No, he's a baboon. Like, there's no, like, that's not rocket science. Yeah, I mean, Nancy says after the man who attacked her attacked her, he ran through a glass door. Exactly. No one's winning any intelligence awards. No. And Jeff went further to say that Tonya, once the plan had been made, had given him the final go-ahead to carry out the attack. So he is very much implicating her from start to finish. And that is pretty bad news for Tonya's defence. And it was just about to get

worse. So Jeff claimed that Tonya had called a freelance journalist called Vera Marano, who she'd worked with previously. And Jeff alleged that Tonya had called Marano and got information on where Kerrigan would be. And unfortunately for Tonya Harding's defence, on the 22nd of January, Vera Marano claimed that these calls had actually taken place. After this, and given the press frenzy around this case, Tonya had no choice but to publicly make a statement. And so on the 27th of January, the day after Jeff's interview with the authorities, Tonya's team called a press conference and the world waited with bated breath.

I would like to begin by saying how sorry I am about what happened to Nancy Kerrigan. I am embarrassed and ashamed to think that to compete against Nancy at Nationals. I have a great deal of respect for Nancy. My victory at Nationals was unfulfilling without the challenge of skating against Nancy. I had no prior knowledge of the planned assault on Nancy Kerrigan. I am responsible, however, for failing to report things I learned about the assault when I returned home from nationals. Many of you will be unable to forgive me for that. It will be difficult to forgive myself. Uh-oh.

There's a lot of I's in that statement, Tonya. So, yeah, as we all just heard there, Tonya's legal team, led by Dennis Rawlinson, who's actually her coach's husband, had decided that she had no other choice but to admit that she had indeed withheld information about the attack on Nancy. But despite all of this, for the time being,

Tonya was still a free woman with a place on the Olympic figure skating team. Without any evidence to back up Jeff's statement, at this point at least, it was just his word against hers on whether or not she'd known about the attack before it took place. Tonya tried her best to maintain a stable training schedule, but the odds weren't in her favour. Unlike Nancy Kerrigan, who was training behind closed doors, Tonya had to train at the same local ice rink she trained at as a child.

And everyone knew that. Thousands of people turned up every day to watch her, and everyone from local news to the New York Times were rinkside, all desperate for a picture, a video, or even better, an interview with the now infamous Tonya Harding. Off the ice, things weren't great. Tonya was being hounded by the press wherever she went. The only thing they wanted more than a picture of her training was a picture of her in her clapped-out pickup truck driving to and from said training.

When Tonya was in the safety of her own home, the press would knock on her door at all hours of the day and the night. They set off her car alarm so she'd have to come outside, and the press even reported her truck to the local parking authority so that it would be towed away, and then they could all take pictures of a very stressed and unkept-looking Tonya Harding running out of her house as the towing company dragged her car away. Then, on the 30th of January 1994, news that looked like it would put Tonya Harding's Olympic dream on ice permanently broke.

Kathy Peterson, a local restaurant owner in Portland, Tonya's hometown, was rummaging through her bins trying to find any evidence of who had been dumping their bin bags in the commercial waste bins outside of her house. In one of those bags she found an envelope covered in doodles and scribbles and the words Tony Kent Arena written on the back of it. The Tony Kent Arena was the rink that Nancy Kerrigan had been training at in Boston before travelling down to Detroit to compete in the US Nationals. It was also the arena that Shane Stant had told the FBI he had sat outside, moving his car every 30 minutes, waiting to assault Nancy

in their first ever botched attempt to attack her. This is like some fucking unbelievable shit. It's like a restaurant owner going through the fucking bins and finds this thing. It's like, it's just the name of an ice rink. I also, it's just, in my opinion, total bullshit. Like it's not, sorry, no. So this note in yet more bullshit was examined by a handwriting expert who told Portland authorities that the writing on the note was a definite match for Jeff and Tonya and most importantly,

that the words Tony Kent Arena had specifically been written by Tonya. So this evidence, if we're going to call it that, directly implicated Tonya in the planning of the attack and put both her place on the Olympic team and as a free woman in doubt. Sensing that her dream of winning gold at the Olympics

was hanging in the balance, Tonya, with the help of her attorney, went on the offensive. With a hearing set for after the Olympics, Tonya and her legal team threatened to sue the US National Figure Skating Association if they kicked her off the Olympic team, stating that she was innocent until proven guilty and therefore still eligible to compete for the United States. Six days later, the USNFA ruled that there was

reasonable grounds to believe that Tonya Harding had broken the sports code of ethics. However, because the disciplinary hearing was set for after the Olympics, and fearing that Tonya would just compete regardless, the US national figure skating president Claire Ferguson decided not to revoke Tonya Harding's membership until the hearing had taken place. So, by the skin of its teeth, Tonya's Olympic dream, despite all the odds, was hanging on. Now, the perfect fairytale ending to this story would be Tonya Harding winning the Olympic gold, being found not guilty and continuing life as a boss-ass bitch.

But it wasn't to be. Tonya was hounded by the press from the moment she left for the Olympics. She was even interviewed on the plane as she travelled over to Norway. She was swamped by mobs of reporters from the moment she touched down in Lillehammer and had 24-7 security following her every move. Then, on the day of the competition, Tonya, in a dramatic finale to the sporting saga of the century, arrived on the ice with a broken lace, which forced her to retire from her run early. The judges on the day gave her a reskate. They have to do that. That's not them doing her a favour.

Yeah, I was going to be like, her lace is broken. There's a really famous picture of her slamming her skate up on the judges' table and being like, you have to let me go again. But even when they let her go again, it still wasn't to be. The month between her win at the Nationals and her appearance at the Nationals and her appearance at the Olympics had taken its toll on Tonya Harding, and she failed to land a triple axel in either her long or short program, and ended up finishing eighth. Nancy Kerrigan, on the other

hand, put down the performance of a lifetime and came back from unbelievable odds to win a silver medal. Can we just give major props to Nancy for that? Yeah, my God, yeah. Fuck me. Getting whacked as hard as she did, as hard as you heard her fucking screaming moments ago. She comes back and wins silver play six weeks later. That's fucking sick.

Go Nancy. Yeah, Nancy takes no shit. Just over a month later, after the Olympics, on the 16th of March 1994, Tonya Harding pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hinder the prosecution. As a part of a plea deal, she admitted that she had witnessed Jeff phone Derek Smith after the attack had taken place and that she had witnessed evidence during several phone calls, which she had failed to report. For his part, Jeff, having also taken a plea deal to

provide a statement against Tonya, was given a two-year sentence and had to give a public apology to Nancy Kerrigan. Sean Eckhart was given 18 months for racketeering. Shane Stant, who had carried out the attack, and getaway driver Derek Smith both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit second-degree assault. Stant served 15 months before getting out and turning his life around apparently. Tonya Harding was given three years probation and a $100,000 fine and 500 hours of community service. Five days later a grand jury stated that there was enough evidence that Tonya had participated in the planning of the attack on Nancy stating that she'd used the $10,000 given to her by the US Figure Skating Association to finance the attack,

and that she'd been involved from the beginning, or at least very close to the beginning. However, she wasn't charged as part of her plea deal. But for Tonya, the biggest blow came three months later, when based on the evidence given at the hearing in Portland, the US Figure Skating Association stripped her of her win at the 1994 US Nationals and banned her for life from competing either as a skater or even as a coach. And Tonya, despite the scenes in I, Tonya, didn't appear at the hearing, and she didn't appeal the decision. And even though the USFSA doesn't have control over the entire pro skating competitive scene,

Tonya was outcast by the community and she couldn't find any further financial support or sponsorship. Her last competitive skate was in 1999 when she came second in an ESPN skating competition. After that, she had a short-lived career as a professional boxer, and then went on to make several appearances on American reality TV. She's now remarried, and goes by the name Tonya Price. And since the release of I, Tonya, she's made a significant comeback in the eyes of the public, which was only further compounded by a 2017 interview she gave on Ellen, in which she said that she still trains three times a week, but now is much more focused on being a good mother to her son, Gordon. I just have such a soft spot for her.

And I don't know what I mean. I'm sure it is me just being completely taken in by propaganda. But I please feel free to disagree with me. People at home and be like well she's a horrible piece of shit and you're just being taken in by Hollywood I mean I don't think she knew and I just think it's people aren't that simple if there's anything we've learned on red-handed people aren't that simple I think she probably did know about it I can't condone that that's not very sportsmanship it's not very good of you Tonya don't do that because you know Nancy could

have been fucking Nancy could have never walked again for you know like you didn't know what that guy was gonna do it's awful if she knew about it if i was in a court of law i don't think they would have presented me with enough evidence that i would have convicted tonya because they can't prove that she knew about it from the beginning the ten thousand dollars being missing is very suspect but we also know jeff could have just taken that. Yeah, that's what I think. I don't think she never knew. No, no, no, no. I think on the night it happened, I don't think she knew it was going to happen.

I don't know if she did or not, but I wouldn't convict her in a court of law. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I wouldn't say that I emotionally convinced that she didn't know. But for me, the real hero is Nancy. Get on watch and the fucking leg and come back and win in silver six weeks later. I've got a soft spot for her my whole body is soft for nancy lover so yeah that's it guys and you know what whatever you think of tonya harding and whatever she did or didn't do i do think that the story of her background like we do with anybody we cover on red handed is still worth telling like the domestic abuse is not in question, the abusive relationship she had with her mother, LaVonne, the difficulty she had,

you know, challenging the norms within that sport and getting to where she got, all deserve a huge amount of praise and admiration. For everything else, the jury's out. So that's it. Hopefully you enjoyed that. And if you'd like to, I don't know, listen to us talk about some other things, then head on over right now to patreon.com slash redhanded and become a patron of Red Handed. And then you can listen to and watch all the bonus content you would like to your heart's content. Yeah, and you can also come over to Spotify

for our Spotify exclusive show, an original from Parkhouse, which is called Sinister Societies, which is not red-handed sports. It's red-handed narcissists so you can get that only on spotify and we'll see you there or here or maybe in your bedroom turn around goodbye You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either. Until I came face to face with them.

Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music,

or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.