Full name Tonya Maxene Harding Height 1.55 m | Residence Yacolt, WA, U.S. Children Gordon Price Name Tonya Harding | |
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Coach Diane Rawlinson, Dody Teachman Spouse Joseph Jens Price (m. 2010), Michael Smith (m. 1995–1996), Jeff Gillooly (m. 1990–1993) Parents Al Harding, LaVona Fay Golden Similar People | ||
Zodiac Sign Scorpio Nationality American | ||
Tonya Harding (USA) - 1994 Lillehammer, Figure Skating, Ladies' Free Skate, 1st Attempt
Tonya Maxene Harding (born November 12, 1970) is a former American figure skater. She was a two-TIME Olympian and a two-time Skate America Champion. In 1991, she won the U.S. Figure Skating Championships and placed second in the World Championships. Harding was the second woman (and the first American woman) to complete a triple Axel jump in competition. In 1994, she was banned for life from the U.S. Figure Skating Association after pleading guilty to hindering the prosecution following the attack on fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan.
Contents
- Tonya Harding USA 1994 Lillehammer Figure Skating Ladies Free Skate 1st Attempt
- The tonya harding and nancy kerrigan saga part 1
- Early life
- Skating career
- Attack on Nancy Kerrigan and aftermath
- Later celebrity
- Boxing career
- Automobile racing land speed record
- Personal life
- In culture
- Film
- Television
- Music and opera
- References
The tonya harding and nancy kerrigan saga part 1
Early life
Tonya Harding was born on November 12, 1970 in Portland, Oregon. Harding began skating at age three. Harding stopped attending David Douglas High School in Portland during her sophomore year. She earned a GED later.
Tonya Harding has stated that by the time she was 7 years old, she was mentally and physically abused by her mother. Her mother has admitted to one instance of hitting Tonya at an ice rink.
Skating career
Harding began working her way up the competitive skating ladder in the mid-1980s, placing sixth at the 1986 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, fifth in 1987 and 1988, and third in 1989. She was considered a strong contender at the 1990 U.S. Figure Skating Championships after having won Skate America 1989, but she had a poor free skate as a result of suffering from the flu and asthma, and dropped from second place after the original program to finish seventh overall. While she was a powerful free skater, she typically had lower placements in the compulsory figures.
Harding's breakthrough year was in 1991, where she landed her first triple axel at the U.S. Championships, winning the title with the event's first 6.0 ever given to a single female skater for technical merit. At the 1991 World Championships, she again completed the triple axel (becoming the first American woman to perform it at an international event) but finished second to Kristi Yamaguchi.
At the Fall 1991 Skate America, Harding recorded three more firsts:
Despite these record-breaking performances, she was never able to successfully perform the triple axel in a competition after 1991, and her competitive results began to decline as a result. In 1992, she placed third in the U.S. Championships after twisting her ankle in practice. She finished fourth in the 1992 Winter Olympics, and in the 1992 World Championships, she placed sixth in a weak field. In the 1993 season, she skated poorly in the U.S. Championships and failed to qualify for the World Championship team.
Harding was a member of the U.S. ice skating team at the 1994 Winter Olympics In Lillehammer, Norway. Amid controversy before and during the Games, she finished in eighth place, far behind Oksana Baiul (gold) and Nancy Kerrigan (silver).
^† In June 1994, Claire Ferguson and the U.S. Figure Skating Association voted to strip Harding of her 1994 title. However, the competition results were not changed and the title was left vacant rather than moving all the other competitors up one position.
Attack on Nancy Kerrigan and aftermath
On January 6, 1994, Harding's main team competitor Nancy Kerrigan was attacked by assailant Shane Stant after a practice session at the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit. Harding's ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, and her bodyguard, Shawn Eckhardt, hired Stant to break Kerrigan's right leg so that she would be unable to compete at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. After failing to find Kerrigan at her training rink in Massachusetts, Stant followed her to Detroit. When she stepped off the ice after a practice session at Cobo Arena and walked behind a nearby curtain into a corridor, Stant struck her on the thigh a few inches above the knee with an ASP telescopic baton. Her leg was only bruised, not broken, but the injury forced her to withdraw from the national championship. Harding won that event, and she and Kerrigan were both selected for the 1994 Olympic team. Harding finished eighth in Lillehammer, while Kerrigan, by then fully recovered from the injury, won the silver medal behind Oksana Baiul from Ukraine.
The attack on Kerrigan and the news of Harding's alleged involvement led to a media frenzy. Kerrigan appeared on the cover of both TIME and Newsweek magazines in January 1994. Reporters and TV news crews attended Harding's practices in Portland and camped out in front of Kerrigan's home. CBS assigned Connie Chung to follow her every move in Lillehammer. Four hundred members of the press jammed into the practice rink in Norway. Scott Hamilton complained that "the world press was turning the Olympics into just another sensational tabloid event." The tape-delayed broadcast of the short program at the Olympics remains one of the most watched telecasts in American history.
On February 1, 1994, Gillooly accepted a plea bargain in exchange for his testimony against Harding. Gillooly, Stant, Eckhardt, and getaway car driver Derrick Smith all served time in prison for the attack. Eckhardt was sentenced to 18 months in prison for racketeering but was released four months early in September 1995.
Harding avoided further prosecution and a possible jail sentence by pleading guilty on March 16 to conspiring to hinder prosecution of the attackers. She received three years probation, 500 hours of community service, and a $160,000 fine. As part of the plea bargain, she was also forced to withdraw from the 1994 World Figure Skating Championships and resign from the United States Figure Skating Association. On June 30, 1994, after conducting its own investigation of the attack, the USFSA stripped her of her 1994 U.S. Championships title and banned her for life from participating in USFSA-run events as either a skater or a coach. The USFSA concluded that she knew about the attack before it happened and displayed "a clear disregard for fairness, good sportsmanship and ethical behavior". Although the USFSA has no control over non-competitive professional skating events, she was also persona non grata on the pro circuit because few skaters and promoters would work with her. Consequently, she failed to benefit from the professional skating boom that ensued in the aftermath of the scandal.
In her 2008 autobiography, The Tonya Tapes, Harding states that she wanted to call the FBI to reveal what she knew, but decided not to when Gillooly allegedly threatened her with death following a gunpoint gang rape by him and two other men she did not know. He subsequently changed his name to Jeff Stone and called the allegations "utterly ridiculous." Eckhardt, who legally changed his name to Brian Sean Griffith following his release from jail, died of natural causes at age 40 on December 12, 2007.
Later celebrity
Harding had a celebrity sex tape: an explicit "wedding video" showed her having sex with her then-husband, Jeff Gillooly. They had sold it together to Penthouse, for an advance of $200,000 each plus royalties.
On June 22, 1994, in Portland, Oregon, Harding appeared on an AAA professional wrestling show as the manager for wrestling stable Los Gringos Locos. The night's performance included Art Barr, Eddie Guerrero, and Brian Cox.
A promotional musical event was unsuccessful when Harding and her band, the Golden Blades, were booed off the stage in their only performance, in 1995 in Portland, Oregon.
In 1994, Harding was cast in a low-budget action film, Breakaway. The film was released in 1996.
In late 1996, she used mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to help revive an 81-year-old woman, Alice Olson, who collapsed at a bar in Portland while playing video poker.
In March 2008, she became a commentator for TruTV's The Smoking Gun Presents: World's Dumbest....
Boxing career
In 2002, she boxed against Paula Jones on the Fox TV network Celebrity Boxing event, winning the fight. On February 22, 2003, she made her official women's professional boxing debut, losing a four-round decision in the undercard of the Mike Tyson-Clifford Etienne bout, amid rumors that she was having financial difficulties and needed to fight in the ring to earn money. She did another celebrity boxing match, on The Man Show, and won against co-host Doug Stanhope. Stanhope later claimed on his podcast that the fight was fixed because Tonya Harding refused to "fight a man".
On March 23, 2004, it was reported that she canceled a planned boxing match against Tracy Carlton in Oakland, California, because of an alleged death threat against her.
On June 24, 2004, after reportedly not having boxed for over a year, she was beaten in a match in Edmonton, Alberta, by Amy Johnson. Fans reportedly booed her as she entered the ring and cheered wildly for Johnson as she won in the third round. Harding later protested the outcome.
Her boxing career was quite short, a brevity she attributed to asthma. Her overall record was 4–3–0.
Automobile racing land speed record
On August 12, 2010, Harding set a new land speed record for a vintage gas coupe with a speed of 97.177 mph driving a 1931 Ford Model A, named Lickity-Split, on the Bonneville Salt Flats.
Personal life
Harding married Jeff Gillooly in 1990, when she was 19 years old. Their tumultuous marriage ended in divorce in 1993. She married her second husband, Michael Smith, in 1995 and divorced in 1996. She married 42-year-old Joseph Jens Price on June 23, 2010. She gave birth to her only child, a son named Gordon, on February 19, 2011.
In culture
Harding and her role in the Kerrigan attack have been widely referenced in sitcom episodes, music videos, and a primary campaign speech by Barack Obama.
In 2014, Matt Harkins and Viviana Olen created the Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding Museum in their Brooklyn, New York apartment.
Film
On March 21, 2016, it was announced that Australian actress Margot Robbie would portray Harding in the upcoming biographical film, I, Tonya.