I always had a soft spot for Tonya, because she tried hard to escape the sewer she was born into and got pretty far before the grifters around her pulled her back down into it.
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.