Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan | 64

Have you ever had a beef with someone that was so serious you considered physical violence against them? Is that too intense of a question? No, it's I'm deciding how much I wanna share. I mean, have I had the urge? Sure, but any violence actually inflicted was always warranted by me. Of course. No, I would never expect to be violent against anybody unwarranted.

See the trick about the violence is that you can't do it, but you can strongly insinuate that someone else should do it on your behalf. And that's how you kind of get around it. And that may or may not be what happened in today's feud. Oh, okay. I'm not a proxy girl myself, but excited to hear what this is about because You don't outsource your beef? No, if I'm gonna do it, it's it's gonna be me. I'm gonna take full ownership. That snowball.

Well, okay, so today's feud starts off with a story that you probably are familiar with, but let me paint the picture for you. It's the day before the 1994 Olympic trials. So this is the Winter Olympics? It is the Winter Olympics. Des were talking about ice skating. Oh my god. Well they were getting ready for the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway.

But the practice rank is in Detroit. That's where this is happening. Detroit? Detroit, yes. And the ice skater Nancy Kerrigan is practicing. She is known as America's sweetheart on ice. She's very beautiful, very polished, kind of exactly what you think about when you think of an ice skating princess. Brunette, correct? Correct. Okay, I'm getting all the details.

She finishes practicing her routine. She skates off the rink. She's putting on her skate guards, heading towards the changing rooms. There's a bunch of other people in the arena. She's probably not thinking about any of them. She wants to score. Well, at the upcoming Olympic trials, so that she can beat out her biggest rival, Tanya Harding, and make the US team. Oh. But then all of a sudden, this burly man runs at Nancy. Yeah.

Six to two hundred pounds, he has this hard metal police baton in his hand. A coup baton? Or is that what they're called? Yeah, don't ask how I know. Before Nancy can even register. What is happening? You wax her in the knee. Okay, I'm gonna admit something. Obviously, I know now that we're talking about Tanya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan, the iconic feud. Yes. I don't actually know.

A lot about it. So when he hit her, was it a direct hit? Like was she severely injured? Yeah. I mean he gave her pretty severe whack on the knee. Oh no. Enough that she falls to the ground, she's screaming in pain. The guy who does it runs away before Nancy can really get a good look at him. But this happens in this arena with people around. So immediately people are swarming her.

The news crews that were on site to film the practice were there to capture this moment of agony. And there's clips of it. That's crazy. In broad daylight this happened? Pretty much, yeah. Under fluorescent lighting. That's wild. Fluorescent ice skate rink. Let's listen. We have a clip. Why? Why? I don't know it's a hard heart black stick. Okay, wow.

I was gonna ask if she was wearing her skates when that happened. Because can you imagine getting hit that hard and then you have to teeter to the ground? Like that's crazy. You could have broken your ankle too. Oh my god, and she is it's unfortunate to say she is so gorgeous, even when she's in agony, she like looked incredible. Right, no, absolutely stunning. Yeah. I I mean it is truly wild that we have this footage of her, like this a very famous

Attack on an Olympic hopeful and like there's cameras everywhere. We see these moments directly after it. It's pretty wild. These sound like the dumbest criminals to possibly ever exist. It's like farcicle. What is happening? It's not much of a mystery. We'll get the answer to who done it pretty quickly. The attack becomes known as the whack herd round the world.

Every news program was covering it with breathless excitement. And then more news breaks. Tanya Harding, Nancy's ice skating rival, might have had something to do with it. Might? That might is doing some heavy legal work, okay I'm laughing that they like seemingly connected the dots so quickly. Spoiler alert, the people responsible pretty quickly fessed up. And it's sort of a a lingering question still to this day of like how much Kanya knew, whether she knew anything. We'll get into all of it.

Suspending my disbelief for the sake of the episode. Yes. Thank Hello, I'm Matt Ford. And I'm Alice Levine. And we're the hosts of British Scandal. Now, Britain loves a royal scandal. Abdications, affairs, Uncles, we'd have the lot. But this series is about two brothers. Raised in palaces bound by tragedy, supposed to be in. So how did they end up barely speaking? Was it jealousy, the press, the firm? Or was this royal rift always inevitable? This is the story of Harry and Will.

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From Wondery, I'm Matt Belisai. And I'm Sydney Battle. And this is Dis and Tell. So Tanya Harding, that's a name that most people probably know at the very least, even if it's just kind of a vague recollection. I know you and I were mere babes when But yeah, obviously we kind of grew up with The cultural memory of this. But a lot of the details you might not know. I certainly wasn't an expert on this.

Well, lucky for you, I barely know any of it. I don't even know if I was alive when this happened. So thankfully I'm untainted by the rumors. Okay. So much of this story has been like exaggerated and twisted. And I feel like today we're sort of gonna do this kind of myth busting episode because so many people know this story, but I think a part of what we wanna do is Get into some of the details that the media just got wrong or exaggerated in a weird way.

We're not really gonna get into the intricate details of the investigation into the attack. There's you know the whole kind of legal story that follows. It's just way too bonkers to get into all of the twists and turns of it. What we are concerned with is

In this episode, is this rivalry between Tanya and Nancy, and whether it was actually a real rivalry or whether it was was kind of manufactured by the media and people outside, and how the effects of that rivalry or not rivalry are still felt today. This childhood friend of Tanya's said in ESPN's 30 for 30, The Price of Gold. This story is about the Supreme Ice Princess versus the trailer track. Ignoramus. Whose friend said that? That was Tanya's friend who said it. Oh, that's not your friend.

I don't think she was agreeing with the trailer trash ignoramus spin as much as she's saying, like, that's how people are. I can't say if a friend of mine said it like that, I don't think I'd be happy. No, it'd be like you're trying to. This is Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. All right, Sydney. So let's just meet our skaters here, get to know them.

I also think it's worth mentioning that Olympians generally are pretty young. So we're talking about teenage girls and women in their early 20s. That's also a very fraught time in a person's life. The hormones are charged. And yeah, we could talk about the expectations that are put on Olympians and all of that. I agree with you, like a crazy environment. But yeah, to get to know our skaters, we kind of have to understand how they were pitted against each other.

Nancy Kerrigan, as we mentioned, she was kind of the American sweetheart. She appeared poised and polished and wealthy. That was sort of the image that she projected. Even though, and this is kind of our first myth-busting moment, Nancy actually came from a blue-collar family. Her dad worked. multiple jobs to fund her skating. It's an expensive sport. I mean, yeah, skating is expensive.

But she kind of got portrayed as the wealthy one and Tanya is the trailer trash ignoramus. Uh, when in reality it's like middle class versus maybe like poverty level. Yeah. She wasn't this kind of rich princess that she got made out to be. And she was also kind of a tomboy too. She wasn't this like girly girl, at least as a kid. But that being said, I mean she knew how to play the ice skating game.

It is a very subjective sport. The point is to kind of make it all look like it's very easy and effortless no matter how difficult the routine is. Mmm. Nancy, by nineteen ninety-one, she was twenty-two years old and she really had it down pat. She'd grown out her hair. Past the tomboy phase, she was wearing these fair wang skating outfits. Oh, hello. Yeah. And she became known as this very graceful, sleek, elegant.

Data and the media loved her. She was the darling of the ice skating world. And in 1993, she ends up named one of People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People in the World. Then on the other hand there's Tanya Harding. Tanya is sort of everything that Nancy is not. She's more rough around the edges. She grew up in a trailer park. She smokes. She drives a pickup truck. She doesn't have the money to buy these fancy outfits for her routine. So she makes

Her outfits herself. Oh, Spider-Man. And then she does get docked points for quality because they just don't look great. So there is actually like a beauty pageant element to it. Oh, interesting. She also practices in the skating rink at the local mall where she works in the food court. Okay, so she's making it work. Yeah. She's a real bootstrap kind of girl. And yeah, she's she kind of makes all of these concessions because skating is super expensive.

According to Time magazine, in nineteen ninety four it could cost a skater around forty thousand dollars a year when you take into account coaching fees, costumes, skates. Living expenses. In nineteen ninety four? Yeah, that's nineteen ninety four dollars. But as expensive as it is, Tanya just can't walk away. Her coach said back then, in a kind of crude way

Skating for Tanya is her ticket out of the gutter. She lives in a terrible rental house, no supervision at all. She has no direction. She would have nothing in her life if it wasn't for her skating. I feel like they could have said that in a nicer way. I gotta say the people around Tanya, not very generous in their descriptions of her.

To be fair, it's not a dig on her abilities. If anything, it's more like this is the world that she comes from and this is why skating is so important to her. I don't like that they're talking about her like this, but I see what they mean, that this is like they said her ticket out. So Tanya, you know, she comes from this kind of rough background, but she is a phenomenal skater. She's got incredible power, more so than finesse.

She may not be kind of as graceful as everybody else, but she can jump higher, she can spin faster. She's explosive. Yes. She's also the first American woman to perform a triple axle successfully in a competition. After the first time that she pulls it off to win the US figure skating championships in 1991, she also becomes the Second woman ever to receive a perfect technical merit score from a judge at a US nationals competition. Wow.

She's not necessarily the prettiest skater, but she is the most powerful. Another myth busting fact though It wasn't like Nancy was this golden child who just constantly won and Tanya was sitting on the sidelines crying about it. They were pretty evenly matched. They were different styles of skaters, but they were both very good and they were fierce competitors.

They were always trying to outdo each other. In the 1991 US Nationals, Tanya wins the gold and Nancy comes in third. Oh. And then at the world championships. Tanya gets silver, Nancy gets bronze. Tanya also wins Skate America, which is another skating competition. So she has a great year in 1991. Nancy is watching all of this.

From the sidelines. She's basically forced to face Tanya and interact with her at every competition. And here's the thing that I didn't realize. One time they even shared a room together. What? Yeah. Sleeping with the enemy. Quite literally. Wow. So yeah, Tanya's kind of at the top in 1991. The tables are about to turn though, and it's going to leave Tanya desperate to reclaim her glory. Okay, so after her amazing success in nineteen nighty one.

Tanya starts to falter a little bit. Oh. She just can't manage to land that triple axle anymore. Every time she tries it in the competition, she falls. She can't land this triple axle, and that's the thing that sets her apart from these other people who are playing into the beauty and the grace. She and Nancy both head to the 1992 Winter Olympics in France this time. And when they compete there, Nancy comes out on top with the bronze medal. Tanya finishes fourth. So Tanya is frustrated.

Because she feels like she can't get the judges on her side no matter what she does. She's just never gonna be as perfect as Nancy. So when the next Olympics come around two years later, it's strange because normally the Winter Olympics or four years apart, but this is the year that they split up the winter and summer Olympics into different years. Oh. The Winter Olympics come around in nineteen ninety-four. Tanya kind of figures this is her last real shot. Cause this is the Olympics.

once you reach the ripe old age of twenty four, they're kind of like, All right, time to die. Okay. Well, absolutely. So yeah, heading into this Olympic season She's very desperate to cement her legacy. She needs to win that gold medal. And it's not just a matter of Of pride, she also needs this path to financial stability because once she retires, a lot of that money is gonna dry up unless you're able to get sponsors and endorsements and all of that stuff.

Winning a gold medal can go a long way in getting those things and helping you stay viable. An important note though, so while Tanya doesn't have many of these endorsement deals. اشتركوا في القناة A bunch of them. She has deals with Campbell's Soup, Reebok, Revlon. And that is doubly frustrating for Tanya that she has been like just as good of an Olympian, just as good of a competitor.

But none of these companies want to work with her, even though she's the one that got that first triple axle. She's won all of these competitions. She's just not getting the same offers as Nancy because of her image and that she's kind of seen as the less classy one. Around this time, she's asked about her thoughts on the upcoming Olympics, and she's pretty blunt. At it, she says, to be perfectly honest, what I'm really thinking about are dollar signs. She needs an image consultant.

She needs one person with a filter in her life. That's true. That's a thought that we keep inside. It is a look into her psyche at this time. If you're someone who has to worry about money and that is something on your mind that's going to be weighing you down in a way that maybe it's not weighing your competitors down. It seems like she's reached a point of desperation where she's made winning a gold medal the solution to all of her problems. Yeah. And that

Is a recipe for disaster. Right. Especially when she kind of views one person in particular as standing in the way of that dream.

So that brings us back to the incident at the beginning when Nancy is attacked with that metal rod on January sixth, no less. January sixth, nineteen ninety-four, a cursed day. I know something cosmically aligns on January sixth. It's true. This incident, the storming of the Capitol, the birth of my friend Alex. Really, really tumultuous. Just a dark, dark day for Americans. Love you, Alex.

Back in January 6, 1994, it's the day before the US National Championships, which are the qualifiers for the Olympics and skating. And there's only two spots up for grabs on the And Nancy's whacked in the knee. She's forced to drop out of the qualifiers. And without Nancy competing, Tanya goes on to win the national championships and she makes it onto the Olympic team. She doesn't land the triple axle, but her routine is still good enough that she takes home first place.

She needs to stop trying with that damn triple axle. She better stick to a double and Keep it moving. But yeah, despite the fact that Nancy gets whacked in the knee and can't compete in the qualifiers, the US figure skating association gives her a spot on the Olympic team anyway. That would boil my blood if I was Tanya. Jesus Christ. Right. Well, clearly then it wasn't that severe of an injury that she couldn't recover from it. Well, she kind of lucked out because the

spot that it hit her was just above the knee. Oh, see, missed. If it had been like a couple inches higher or a couple inches lower, it probably would have been like career ending injury. But it was in just the perfect spot that she did end up recovering fairly quickly. But anyway, Nancy and Tanya make the Olympics team. A few weeks later, Nancy has remarkably recovered. But of course, that attack becomes global discourse.

For the sake of keeping this story focused on the feud between Nancy and Tanya, we'll give a quick summary of what follows and the legal part. But basically what happens, Tanya's ex-husband, he's this guy named Jeff Galulli. They were a pretty volatile couple and Tanya accused him of domestic abuse. But by this point in time, they'd apparently reconciled and they were back to living together, even though the divorce had gone through.

Anyway, Jeff got together with Tanya's so-called bodyguard, who's this guy named Sean Eckhart, and together the two men conspire to assault Nancy. So it's her ex husband and her bodyguard who conspire to assault Nancy. Twenty-four and already has an ex-husband. She's lived a million lives. Yeah. Sean hired these two other guys. Shane Stant, the guy who whacked Nancy in the knee, and his getaway driver, Derek Smith. That's how he got away so fast, because he had a driver.

Okay. Within a week of the attack, the bodyguard confessed to the FBI and Shane Stant, the whacker, turned himself in. So yeah, all of these people close to Tanya, they confess that they were behind this.

Tanya herself, though, denies the She swears that she had no idea about any of it. And then, on January twenty-seventh, just weeks before the Olympics, her ex-husband confesses to the FBI and implicates himself and Tanya. You cannot keep people this dumb around you, Tanya. Yeah. You can't. You divorced that man for a reason. That ultimately does seem to be what she is most guilty of is just having dumbass friends. So she hopes.

She holds this press conference and for the very first time she publicly admits that she did fail to tell authorities what she knew about the attack, but she insists that she didn't have any role in it and that she only found out details after the fact. Hmm. Here's part of what she said in her own words. I had no prior knowledge of the planned assault on Nancy Kerrigan. I am responsible, however, for failing

For failing to report things I learned about the assault when I returned home from Nationals. Despite my mistakes and my rough edges, I have nothing have done nothing to violate the standards and excellence of sports of sportsmanship that are expected in an Olympic athlete. Nancy Kerrigan and I can show the world two different types of figure skating. А look forward to being on a team with her.

Where to begin? What a Freudian slip to say, I have nothing, instead of I've done nothing. Oh, that's sad. And then you can see her face. For those who want to watch it, it's just called Harding's statement on YouTube. And you can see her mouth kind of move up and it looks like she has contempt that she's even having to make this. Statement. And then the end where she's like, I look forward to being on the team with her. I'm like, girl, are they gonna still let you be on that team? Yeah.

Wait, really? I mean, yeah, they don't kick her off or anything. I didn't know that. I thought she got like banned. So they do try to kick her off because everybody wants her not to be there, but she sues the figure skating association and says basically like you have to let me go until there's a decision in the court case. But yeah, I mean this revelation that Tanya did know stuff about the assault, even though she says she didn't know before the fact.

The world eats it up and suddenly women's figure skating is the most popular Olympic competition. It's must-see TV. Everyone wants to see the showdown between these two skaters. Is it going to be the sweet innocent Nancy that wins or this bad girl villain that steals the gold out from under her?

Okay, Sydney. So Nancy Kerrigan has just suffered a brutal attack about six weeks earlier. Now, remarkably, she's recovered. We're headed to the 1994 Olympics. In that Lillehammer, Norway. And Nancy is headed there with her rival, Tanya Harding, who may or may not be responsible for the attack on Nancy. This is a massive, massive story. The media frenzy around it is insane. In the lead up to the Olympics,

The press cannot get enough of Tanya Nancy. Tanya has to sneak into her practice rank so she doesn't get bombarded by press. Oh goodness. Sometimes reporters even call her apartment and say that she has a flat tire so that she comes out and then they get photos of her. Weird. Sometimes they had her car towed. That's wild. Yeah, they were pulling out all the stops. Time magazine ran multiple

cover stories about it. There's two of them that we have here. These are very extreme covers that I'm really just looking at for the first time. Wow. Okay, so the cover on the left, the headline is Ice. The strange plot to cripple Nancy Kerrigan. And they're both sitting next to each other. They put a target over them. Well, the center of the bullseye is Nancy Kerrigan's knee. True, true. And then

Then the cover on the right is Nancy Kerrigan looking very graceful, beautiful, skating. And then and I didn't even notice this till just now in the background. Is a superimposed image of Tanya Harding and they've made her look like a ghoul. Like the mask from Scream. Yeah, she's staring at Nancy. It's haunting. And the headline is the star-crossed Olympic. I guess around this time, most people were just kind of trying to figure out what Tanya's motives were.

Newsweek ran a story titled Tanya's Deal and they said the truth is that for the last month, myths have surrounded Tanya and Nancy too, that even pancake makeup cannot hide. My question is, do you think any part of Tanya liked this attention? It's tempting to say yes, but I feel like

If they're calling in your car and getting it towed, probably not. Yeah, that part of it would suck. I mean, yeah, she's basically been cast as a villain overnight. Then there's CBS, which is the network that aired the Olympics. And they know they've got this ratings bonanza on their hands because all of the press that their reporters are able to drum up means they're going to get more viewers to watch the Olympics.

To make matters even more intense, Tanya and Nancy have not seen each other in person since the attack. No. The first time that they're going to be face to face with one another is this practice session that each country's team gets. Where they go onto the ice together. Nancy tries to petition to practice at a different time, but her request is denied. I'm assuming by an Olympic committee that just lives for drama. That's cold. But yeah, the practice session takes place in this.

small rink. It's got this viewing section that could maybe fill like a hundred people and yet two thousand people jam into it. Two thousand people in a hundred person space. Yeah. So the practice session starts, Nancy skates out onto the ice in the same outfit that she got attacked in, which I suppose is a choice. I guess it's her way of saying like

You're not gonna take this away from me. Good for her. According to Tanya, she goes up to Nancy on the rank, she apologizes for being close to the people who attacked her, and Nancy apparently ignores her. Solid move. Understandable. Here is This kind of famous picture from this practice session. So Nancy is in the foreground with her back to Tanya, who's Dating behind her, and she's captured like this lurking ogre. Don't do that. That is behind Nancy on the ice. And Nancy looks so unbothered.

Yeah. Personally, if I had just suffered an attack, I probably wouldn't have turned my back on Tanya, that's for sure. I know, that's very bold. I would have kept my eyes on her. Nancy girl, stay alert.

Yeah, I mean if the media was sort of portraying this pair as a rivalry before. This is now definitively Tanya versus Nancy. I mean, this is the Olympics. There are a bunch of competitors, but it's like people are only watching for these two. That was the draw. So another myth-busting moment heading into this Olympic competition because the media portrays this as Tanya versus Nancy. That's sort of true in the United States. Like they're the best skaters in the US.

Once you bring in the skaters from all around the world, Tanya doesn't really stack up as much. She falls down the pecking order, which is why when we mentioned before, like the nineteen ninety two Olympics, She got fourth place, right? It's because there are these international competitors who are just better than her. Interesting. And yeah, according to Bleacher Report, she hadn't been training enough. She was out of shape.

She hadn't landed a triple axle in competition in forever. And then adding this media circus that had surrounded this scandal, there's a lot to distract Tanya going into this contest. I feel bad for her. The fact that it's being portrayed as this

neck and neck rivalry between Tanya and Nancy when it's like they weren't really going head to head with one another at the Olympics. It was just being portrayed as a rivalry because it was a good story. But I mean from kind of a cynical viewership perspective. It was a right choice because the nineteen ninety four women's figure skating competition was the third most watched sporting event in US history at the time. Wow. So we're talking like

Super Bowl level, and it's still the most watched Olympic program in history to this day. For good reason. I would be rubbernecking that too. Yeah. So the competition takes place over the course of two nights. The first night is for the short program, the second is for the long program. Don't ask me to elaborate on what that really means. Nancy skates phenomenally. Tanya, not so much. After the short program, Nancy is first and Tanya is in tenth.

And at that point, it's not impossible for Tanya to meddle, but it would be incredibly hard to imagine that she'd pull it off. And the next night It's time for the long program. Tanya Harding. Tanya's name is announced over the loudspeaker, and she doesn't come out onto the ice. What? Everyone in the stands is Waiting and waiting and waiting. Tanya Harding. And if Tanya doesn't show up within two minutes, she's going to get disqualified. With seconds to spare, she comes out onto the ice.

But then she bails out of her first jump. And skates over to the judges and tells them that her lace is broken. And she begs them to let her start over. Okay. They allow it. And she reskates later, but even then she's just not up to snuff. Mmm. She can feel her Olympic dreams are slipping away. Nancy skates the long program after Tanya and gives a gold medal performance. Truly like ultimate redemption. She showed him. Except

Not quite, because Nancy loses out in a controversial decision to Oksana Bayul. Ooh, Oksana. Hello. She wins the gold by just a tenth of a point. And Nancy takes home silver. Ugh. Or Nancy. Oh, that kind of makes me. I don't know. Like, I'm happy for Nancy. I love that she had this redemption of sorts after being injured.

But it would have been such a good story if Tanya also like defied all odds. Right. And at least got bronze or something. Yeah. The crazy thing is that the media still focuses on Tanya and Nancy in their headlines about the results. Even though Tanya was like not on the podium whatsoever, the Irish Times, so this is international press, the Irish Times said, Few tears, no blood, as Snow White beats poison dwarf. Poison dwarf? See uh ogre was nice. That is

Oh wild. The New York Daily News said a perfect Lutz, a total klutz, and a Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet. said Beauty crushes the beast. No I like they were going so hard on her. Jesus. I can't believe they just talk about her like this. Tanya ended up getting eighth place. Just a total neglect of the people from third to seventh place. And first, really. But yeah, so Tanya is about to lose a lot more than just the chance of a medal.

Because when all of the dust settles from this whackered round the world situation, Tanya's the one who's going to feel all the hits. Oh no. I feel like she's in for it. In March of nineteen ninety four, a month after the Olympics. Tanya pleads guilty to conspiracy to hinder the prosecution. She doesn't get jail time. She's placed on a three-year probation. She's ordered to serve 500 hours of community service and she has to pay a$160,000 fine. Oh no, that's rough.

But worst of all, because now she has this guilty plea, she's banned for life from the US Figure Skating Association. Wow. They strip her of her nineteen ninety-four national title and they forbid her from ever being a coach. That's so sad. It's about to get even worse because later that year, Tanya's ex-husband, Jeff Galulli, the man who is involved in all of this crap, sells a sex tape. That he made with Tanya, titled Wedding Video, which featured her in a wedding dress costume.

I kid you not, my fear when I heard that fine, my unfortunate first thought was The only way to get that much money is to like release a sex tape or something. And then I didn't say it because I thought that would be crass and crazy. She doesn't have any way to even profit off of it. Penthouse magazine publishes stills from the video. No. And yeah, she says she doesn't get any money from this.

Just an awful abuse of a private video. That is so horrible. I I don't know how many more hits she can take. That's a really bad one. Yeah. I guess she turns things around. by doling out the hits herself. She turns to boxing to make a living. Oh. Is she good? Well I mean she does it for a few years and then she ends up moving on and working some other odd jobs to make ends meet. Ironically, after all of this went down, ice skating popularity

Exploded. Not surprised. There were ice skating tours around the country that filled up arenas, and skaters started making real bank from it. It's really unfortunate that this is what launched figure skating into the stratosphere. Yeah. And that Tanya was a part of it but doesn't get to profit from any of it. No, and it's like I understand she did a really bad thing, like objectively bad.

Just like throw her a bone or something. She clearly didn't do this because she's in a good place and because she's doing well in life. Yeah. Nancy, on the other hand, did really benefit from all of the publicity and she profited from it. She ended up retiring from competition after those Olympics, but she went on to skate in professional shows. She worked as a TV commentator.

She's got a bunch of corporate endorsement deals after that. I mean, she didn't totally escape this time period completely unscathed, because less than two weeks after she won the silver medal, the media Started to turn on her a little bit. They ran stories with headlines like The souring of America's sweetheart, Nancy Kerrigan off the ice doesn't seem half as nice. Well when you're deified like that and you're made into this angel golden girl.

you're not allowed to have a bad day. Right. It was prompted from this incident where apparently she attended a Disney World parade and she was caught on mic saying that it was corny and that she hated it. I love her. She sounds fun. Yeah, queen. Objectively something that almost everybody could agree on. Yeah, I mean, I don't even think that's that bad. That's just funny.

I think what's unfortunate is that she probably wasn't viewed as like a true human being as much as just like an idea of a person. Yeah. The fact that all of this happened in the span of like a few months. has gotta be emotionally taxing. I just led that it was all over her being like, this is corny and I hate it in a Su Disney parade. And they act like she decapitated Mickey Mouse. She's too real. Yeah.

Okay, so four years later, in 1998, Fox airs this TV special called Breaking the Ice. First face-to-face interview between Tanya and Nancy since the incident. With each other? Yeah. Wow. During the interview, Nancy denies that there was ever a real rivalry between her and Tanya. Which again, there really wasn't. Yeah, I believe her. And when the interviewer turns to Tanya and asks how the whole scandal changed her life.

She says it was incredibly hard. She lost everything. And you can just see how uncomfortable Nancy is to be sitting across from her. We can listen to this clip. Nancy, I wanna apologize again for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, around the wrong people. If I would have known anything you know, in in the beginning, I would have done anything I could to stop it. Anything. I mean, I would have dropped everything I had in my whole life to do that.

I mean, I say that from the bottom of my heart. I really do. I really do. Hmm. I believe that she's sorry about what happened. I do believe that she regrets. everything. I don't know if this is the entire truth. And I don't blame her for like taking that to her grave that she might have known more than she's saying, but I do believe that she's sorry. I don't think Nancy believes her. I think Nancy seems like she has reached a point of peace.

with Tanya, but at the same time is like I don't believe what you're saying at all. Yeah, I mean Tanya reiterates That if she had known anything, she would have tried to stop it. For years to come, this is the line that she sticks to. Eleven years later, in 2009, she gives an interview with reporter Peter Hosley. She says this about Nancy, if you'll read it for us. She's happy. I'm happy. We live our separate lives.

People continually say, oh, well, maybe she'll want to do this with you, or she'll want to do that for you. I know it'll be big ratings and everything. It's like, you know what? Leave it alone. We were friends a long time ago. We were competitors. And then all the crap happened and nothing, but she has her life and I have mine.

Yeah, it's gotta be frustrating that when you consider the fact that they weren't actually that much of neck and neck rivals worldwide, that now their names are like forever tied with one another. That's gotta be frustrating. Frustrating, but also something that she did. Again, if you believe her, Tanya didn't actually have anything to do with the crime beforehand. The thing is, even if she did have nothing to do with the crime, she didn't know about it beforehand. What would motivate those guys

to do that to Nancy. Like, you're not blameless in this. I mean, I think the person who gets to be more frustrated at that is Nancy. Yeah. Because She is the victim in the situation, even though the backlash that Tanya experienced was severe. Yeah, and unfortunately it's not gonna go away anytime soon because Tanya's life is about to be catapulted back into the spotlight. And that means Nancy's life is back in the spotlight too. Thanks a lot, Margot Robbie.

All right. We had the scandal. We had the aftermath of the scandal. Now another eight years have passed. And there's an announcement for a new movie called I Tanya. Producer Margot Robbie. She's both producing it and starring in it. And it's going to be a kind of sympathetic look at Tanya Harding. With the movie slated for release. Both the real-life Tanya and Nancy are back in the headlines. In September 2017, the movie premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival.

And the director, Craig Gillespie, told Vice this, if you'll read it for us. I thought this was a real opportunity to take this person in our society who has been the poster child as the villain and a punchline for twenty-five years. and to just re-examine that and to look at her as a human being and not as a tabloid headline. Yeah, I mean, I agree. She was so young when all of this happened. And people make really horrible mistakes. sort of given no road to redemption until this movie.

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of the way that we've been talking about all of this so far is because of this movie. I think it like really changed the way that the world viewed her. And you know, Tanya was like Thank God they got a hot woman to play me because I am not ugly. So obviously the movie was a massive success. A couple months after its release, Tanya joins Margot Robbie hand in hand on the red carpet of the Golden Globes. Wow. They got three nominations.

at the Golden Globes. Allison Janney, who plays Tanya's mother, ends up winning Best Actress. And she also wins an Oscar for it. Right. Here is part of her Golden Globes acceptance speech because she talks about Tanya in it. Everyone in this movie did is tell a story about class. In America, tell a story about the disenfranchised. Tell a story about a woman who was not embraced for her individuality. Tell a story about truth and the perception of truth in the media.

Obviously I shanya very well received. Tanya herself loves it. Well, I'm sure. It may not be a hundred percent accurate, but she thinks it gets to the heart of the matter. And Along with this movie, Tanya gets this redemption piece in the New York Times. I remember seeing this headline. Tanya Harding would like her apology now. Okay. So yeah, it very much gets treated as like everyone's wrong and

Now we're getting the truth. Tanya, let's not get crazy. Like, do I believe you had a little too much taken from you? Absolutely, but yeah. Okay girl, let's not get carried away. The basic facts have not changed. Meanwhile, Nancy tells the Boston Globe that's a very good thing. She hasn't seen the film. She doesn't plan on seeing the film. She says, it's not really part of my life. As you say, I was the victim. That's my role in this whole thing. That's it.

It is weird, that's for sure. A bizarre thing. The whole thing was crazy, being that it's a story. I mean cut. It's so interesting because this was like a major speed bump in Nancy's life. But just that, a speed bump. And for Tanya, it became her entire life. Yeah. And so it doesn't surprise me that Nancy's like, I'm tired of this. Can we move on? Yeah, I mean it's gotta be frustrating for Nancy that yeah, you were the victim in this situation. Your life has been fairly okay afterwards.

But now this woman who was like maybe indirectly responsible for you getting attacked is getting a movie where Margot Robbie plays her and getting to like walk red carpets.

Also around this time, ABC News airs a special called Truth and Lies. The Tanya Harding story and it features interviews with Tanya, Jeff Galouli, bunch of others. And in the special, Tanya says that they were never rivals. She says, We were competitors. Yes, rivals? No. Any of us could have won, any of us could have failed.

I think they were rivals mostly in Tanya's head. Well, I mean she's saying they were competitors but not rivals. That's I mean we're splitting hairs a little bit over that. I mean we've done a couple of other sports feuds where naturally sports is about competition. And so the other people, you are directly competing against them in a way that like, you know, actors aren't directly competing with one another. Indirectly, yes.

Directly, you're not in competition. And yet, in order to like get more viewers and and create entertainment around these games, the media sort of presents different athletes as rivals. And like then draws parts of their biographies out to draw contrast between them. So I do think Tanya, if she does consider Nancy to be a rival, or if she did back then, it's not all her fault. Yeah.

I guess the main sticking point for me is like if she was just a competitor to you, I don't think that those dumbass people in your life. would have gone after her specifically. Like they clearly went after her because she was a direct threat to you in your mind. I will say the man responsible was her ex-husband, who then later released a sex tape, right? So you could call him a man who was

In her circle to try to profit off of her success. I feel like it was a misguided attempt to help her. Right. Uh, I mean, what did we learn from all of this? I said this earlier. It's still wild that like even if Nancy had not been whacked in the knee, Tanya probably still would have placed and gotten onto the Olympic team and then she probably would have lost.

So it all was sort of for nothing and that's what makes it so crazy. That's what makes it even sadder. That's why I wish that at the very least she could have gone to the Olympics and like gotten bronze or something. And Like believe in yourself more. Do you really think the only way you could have gone to the Olympics was if Nancy Kerrigan wasn't skating? You landed a triple axle. Yeah.

Come on, girl. Believe in yourself. That's the takeaway. I think the best we can hope for if something terrible happens to you and you're maybe responsible for it, the best you can hope for is that Margot Robbie will one day make you look kind of good. Ooh. From Wondery, this is dis

Antel, Tanya Harding, and Nancy Kerrigan. The show was hosted by me, Matt Belisai, and me, Sidney Battle. We use many sources in our research. A few that were particularly helpful were Bleacher Reports, Harding Kerrigan 20 Years Later. Remembering the stunning life-changing attack by Matt Crossman and ESPN's 30 for 30 The Price of Gold. Our senior story editor, Alex Burns, wrote this episode. Kate Downey is our lead producer and Jake Dvorsky is our associate producer.

Our story editor is Greg Castro. Sound design is done by James Morgan with additional audio assistance provided by Daniel Gonzalez. Fact-checking by Sonia Maynard. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Free SoundSync. Joe Florentino is our coordinating professor. producer, our executive producers are Janine Cornelo, Stephanie Jens, Marshall Lewey, and Aaron O'Flarity for Wondering.