Monday Milestone: White Ice Fever
This Week in History:
1994, January 8
Tonya Harding wins the US Figure Skating Championships, with the ominous omission of rival Nancy Kerrigan.
Who cares about ice skating?
A sport of jumps and leaps and triple axels. Honestly, we don’t, you don’t, nobody does.
Unless of course we’re talking about “doing a Bradbury”, or for those old enough to remember Torvil and Dean, the only ice that sportsfans generally care about in this part of the world, goes with alcohol or slushies (or both).
But the names Nancy Kerrigan, or Tonya Harding never fail to raise an eyebrow. Among Making the Nut readers, there’s probably a flicker of recognition that actually has little to do with ice skating, so let’s park the Delorean in 1994 and refresh your memory.
That week, Tonya Harding had just won the US Figure Skating Championship in Detroit. A wonderful moment for the diminutive skater from Portland as in doing so, she had qualified for the Lillehammer Olympics.
Who cares, right?
Stay with us. Because the bigger story wasn’t her victory, rather who she’d beaten for the title. Or didn’t beat as the case may be. The day before Nancy Kerrigan had withdrawn from the competition, citing a leg injury. How coincidental was the timing?
Very. The story goes that Kerrigan was attacked by two men who struck her with a tyre iron in Detroit. Her leg whilst only bruised and not broken still was sufficient injury to force her withdrawal from competition.
And it turns out that the two men involved had been Harding’s bodyguard, Shawn Eckhardt, and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly, a man Harding had married when she was nineteen, and divorced three years later. It was low bearing fruit for journalists everywhere.
Especially when she pleaded guilty to being involved weeks later.
Sporting competitiveness is something to be admired, generally. Who doesn’t enjoy someone who will give the physical limits of their being for the sake of victory? . Provided the will to win on the sporting field falls within the rules of the game. Especially when that person is your opponent, and knowing they have played to their utmost, you have still managed to defeat them. There are few sweeter moments in sport.
But this competitive desire, this will to win in a declining career, is not to be applauded.
Organising your bodyguard and your ex-husband to smack up your rival’s knee just to win the US Figure Skating Championships is probably considered outside the rules of the game.
It’s a step too far.
Whilst Harding would remarkably still be allowed to compete in Lillehammer (she finished eighth whilst a completely recovered Kerrigan won silver), she would go on to plead guilty to involvement in the affair months later. The governing body stripped her of the US Figure Skating Championship she’d won, and banned her for life.
Rightly so. There is no excuse for this behaviour. It’s a misguided competition. But on the bright side, I guess it was at least one reason to care about ice skating.
Milestone Five: Questionable competitiveness
5. Fred Lorz – Ever wanted a gold medal so badly you’d do anything to get it? What hitching a ride during the 1904 St Louis Olympic Marathon. He ran the first nine miles, got a lift for the next eleven, (when the car broke down) and ran the final six. He would have gotten away with it if he didn’t have a guilty conscience. Being a fat bricklayer was something of a giveaway too.
4. Trevor Chappell – No Kiwi has ever forgiven Greg Chappell ordered his brother to send down an underarm delivery denying New Zealand the opportunity to tie the match with a six. A delivery more akin to something on a ten pin bowling alley prevented this. Not cool.
3. Ben Johnson – When the Canadian sprinter broke the 100m track record at the 1988 Olympics, he was lowering world records to places that they had never been before. Slicing several hundredths off in the final was incredible. But his will to win was helped along by anaebolic steroids, and he was subsequently stripped two days later.
2. Lance Armstrong – Seven Tour de France wins. A decade of victories as the greatest cyclist the world has seen. In a similar vein to Johnson, Armstrong was a hero, however, now with a range of doping allegations, his Tour victories stripped and a pending confession, his reputation is in tatters.
1. Bodyline – It’s been eighty years but it still burns brightly in Australian. Douglas Jardine bouncing Australians relentlessly sits on the very edge of sportsmanship, just to beat Bradman. The famous Bill Woodfull quote: “There are two teams out there, one is playing cricket. The other is making no attempt to do so” is a succinct summation.
