Guilty, beyond peradventure of doubt!
Release her, without a stain on her character!
Posted on 01/10/2014 9:28:49 PM PST by Drew68
Debating this on another forum... What do you all think?
Prior to her infamy, was Tonya Harding not the best skater in the world?
Well said. It is not easy escaping from a "trailer trash" upbringing. Tonya almost made it out of that world but unfortunately she kept too many low-rent types around her and they eventually did her in.
During that time, I had a soft spot for Tonya and figured Nancy to be a bit of an elitist snob, so even though the scumbags around Tonya did wrong by clubbing Nancy with a collapsible baton (they originally spoke of assassinating her), I did kind of root for Tonya to kick Nancy's butt in those Olympics.
That said, many people assume that the Kerrigan girl had a privileged life and came from wealth. However, that is not true either. She came from a working class background and has a little "white trash" in her family as well. Case in point is her loser drunk of a brother, while living in his parents basement (never a good sign for a 45-year-old man), was accused of killing their father in a fistfight while in a drunken rage. He was acquitted of manslaughter, mainly due to the fact that the father was not in good health to begin with, but ended up doing some hard time for assault and battery.
Nancy escaped that world by marrying a wealthy yuppie-type. No Jeff Gillooly for Nancy!
Anyway, that was the one and only time in my life I ever had any interest in figure skating. Before and since, it's always been mostly a sissy thing for me. But during that brief period of time, it was like figure skating flirted with elements of pro wrestling and NASCAR.
Guilty, beyond peradventure of doubt!
Release her, without a stain on her character!
Well, hey, at least Tonya doesn’t have a stache and green moss growing between her teeth. But there is still time.
Yes, Harding was the one with the wedding night video.
I use Tonya Harding as sort of an analogy to our current government and new businesses. But Harding was held accountable where the government just keeps on taking out knees.
They are all impressive athletes, but my own favorite from that era was the German skater Katarina Witt. So graceful and swift.
Didn’t I see a couple of triple Lutz’s in there? The T-Axel jump starts with skates forward, the Lutz jump starts from a position skating backward (1/2 rotation shorter).
-Frank
Tonya Harding was athletic but she had no grace. No beautiful flow of motion.
Instead of ballet-like graceful skating to the next jump she rushed to the next trick.
She was not pleasing to watch.
Katerina Witt. I’m shaking thinking of her.:) My favorite, by far.
Pretty, powerful, graceful. The complete package.
I watched this Documentary, SHARP EDGES (1986) about TONYA, a few weeks ago. It is quite good, following her while training and competing for her first Nationals. She was 15. She had two coaches who cared about her and were essentially her Mothers. Her own Mother is interviewed and is a piece of work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GhzZOlP7MA
Nancy married her manager. His ex-wife said Nancy broke up their marriage.
She was graceful and beautiful. It was at the end of the era of women in women's sports, and the beginning of the "girl" age in women's sports.
Anyway, I lost interest in the Olympics after the Cold War ended. I don't know why I was interested in the first place. I think the media hype affected me.
Are you sure about that?
She saved a woman's life.
The IOC, NBC and whoever the governing body of figure skating is should still be paying Harding royalties for what she did for the sport and the olympics.
More often than not, "world-class athlete" goes hand-in-hand with "world-class thug", "world-class druggie", and "world-class a-holes" of numerous sorts.
Long gone are the days when competitive sports contributed anything positive to character development.
Tonya Harding now has a regular gig as a commentator for the Tru-TV show "World's Dumbest."
On January 5th, 1994, nobody gave a damn about women's figure skating. By January 7th, the whole world knew what a triple axel was and parents were lining up to sign up their daughters in skating classes. The women's skating event would become one of the most watched competitions at Lillehammer.
Does Harding deserve credit? To this day she claims innocence of knowing an assault on Kerrigan would take place (I don't believe her). Maybe these royalties should be given to Jeff Gillooly.
So where is Jeff Gillooly today? Well, he's changed his name to Jeff Stone and, surprising to no one, he's selling used cars in Clackamas, Oregon.
I do like that show!
Tru-TV sucks.
The two deserve each other.
Dorothy Hamill said that when she was a child, Peggy Flemming snubbed her when she asked for an autograph, something Dorothy said she promised never to do.
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