Comeback hope

HER CV would make the hardest of gangsta rappers proud: a criminal record, alcoholic mother, a nervous breakdown and two disastrous marriages, one of which lasted just 99 days.

But she is not a New York hood. Her occupation carries rather more elegant connotations. Tonya was once the world's most famous ice- skater. No longer.

The United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA) has rules against its members getting involved in iron-bar attacks on their opponents. Tonya is, of course, Tonya Harding. Now, five years after being banned from her sport for life, she is fighting for a second chance. Yet another second chance. Tonya, 28, remains the blue-collar, hard-drinking, heavy smoking, streetwise woman she always was. It's not a great surprise to discover her home is in a trailer park. Unkind folk might think the phrase "trailer trash" had been invented specifically for her. She's telling me she's launched an audacious comeback campaign. She claims her life sentence has been partially lifted. She vows she will be back on the ice in a professional capacity by the end of the year. But this is news to the USFSA. Its members can't forget the events of 6 January, 1994. That was the day Harding's ex-husband Jeff Gillooly ordered a henchman to club Tonya's skating rival Nancy Kerrigan with a metal bar. Harding and Kerrigan were both medal contenders when Gillooly hatched his plot. After the attack, Kerrigan withdrew from the US Championships and Harding went on to win the title. In the ensuing court case, Gillooly told the court that Harding knew from the start of the plan to cripple Kerrigan but she still maintains that she was the innocent party. "I only knew about it four or five days after it happened and then I couldn't say anything because I was being threatened. I was terrified. I felt trapped. People seem to forget that I was already divorced from my husband when it happened - even though we were still living under the same roof for financial reasons. "Of course I am sorry about what happened. I never had anything against Nancy. We used to share a room when we were on tour." Gillooly pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering. He was sentenced to two years in prison and fined $100,000; Harding skated free from imprisonment. After pleading guilty to conspiracy to conceal, she was fined $160,000, given 500 hours community service and three years' probation. Despite all this, there is a growing clamour for Harding to be freed from her exile. As one member of the USFSA puts this: "There are plenty of people in the ice-skating world who would like to see her in action again. It's tragic that such a talent should be allowed to waste away. Enough is enough. She should be given a break." Harding still has phenomenal support from fans around the world, including in Britain (she hopes to skate here in the autumn). Her personal website has been visited by more than three million people; academics talk about her as a paradigm of class war in contemporary America; and sales of a secret honeymoon sex video continue to be brisk. Harding has not spoken publicly for two years. "I know what people think about me but I just want the chance to show that I have grown up, that I have learned from my mistakes," she says now. "I've paid the price and I believe everyone deserves a second chance. "Mike Tyson was allowed to box again after what he did, and Clinton is allowed to stay in the White House. I just want to prove myself. I've got a good heart. My problem was that I kept ending up in bad company." Harding's blonde hair is straighter than it was and her finger nails longer. She wears a ring in the shape of a heart on her wedding finger. She is in tight, black jeans and a woolly sweater. She smiles a lot, tells rude jokes and shifts her hips from side to side in a suggestive manner. "I always tried to believe there was light at the end of the tunnel but it was hard sometimes. It's only now that I feel I have got my life back on track. I feel good about the future for almost the first time since the troubles began." Kerrigan made a dramatic recovery after the "troubles" and did go to the Olympics after all, winning silver and returning to a hero's welcome. (Harding broke a lace and trailed in eighth.) Kerrigan went on to marry her coach and has had a child since retiring from skating. She works as a commentator and appears in ice spectaculars. The contrast between the two skaters has always been enthralling. Harding married Gillooly when she was 19. He seemed like an escape route. "I grew up in a totally dysfunctional family. My mother was an alcoholic who did some terrible things to me. I never talk to her now. I never want to see her or talk to her ever again. She was bad." Harding has been drawn to "bad" people all her life. After divorcing Gillooly, she met and married Michael Smith but it lasted only 99 days. "It was crazy. As soon as we were married he started treating me badly and I thought to myself, 'Here we go again'. But this time I wasn't going to take it. I wasn't going to put myself in that position. We went to marriage guidance but he gave up after three weeks. Then I went to a pastor and told him what was happening. It was the start of something positive. I wasn't just going to hang around and become a victim." Reconstructing Harding has been a torturous process. But what has kept her going is her skating. She has remained fit, despite her smoking and bouts of drinking. She queues up with everyone else at her local rink, paying $5 for 45 minutes on the ice. Agents have come and gone. There have been other attempts at comebacks. At one point she was made an offer to become a wrestler in Japan -- $2 million was mentioned at the time -but the probation service wouldn't allow her to leave the country. She embarked on a short-lived career as an actress. She tried life as a singer but was booed off stage at her first gig. In between, she washed dishes, painted people's houses and worked on the engine of her huge, four-wheel-drive truck. In fact, it's not her truck. It belongs to Darren, her new boyfriend. They met at a dance club, and she says he's helped her look positively at her life. He works as an occasional electrician. They share a mobile home in Vancouver, Washington, just over the bridge from Portland, where she grew up. "Darren didn't know who I was when we met. He just thought I was another beautiful blonde. All my life I have ended up with people who treat me with no respect and who wanted to use me and that's because I never respected myself. I told myself that I deserved the abuse. I had no confidence, no belief in myself, no power." Except on the ice. Whereas Kerrigan, with Katherine Hepburn looks and a preppie Boston upbringing, was tall and elegant, Harding was short and athletic. "My mother took me to this shopping mall in Portland when I was three. There was an ice rink in the middle of it and I told my mother I wanted to skate. She said 'Why would you want to do something like that?' I had a tantrum there and then and kept it up until she took me down to the ice. That was it. It wasn't long before I started dreaming of skating at the Olympics." Last week Harding signed a contract to teach at the rink where she learnt to skate 25 years ago. She believes official opinion about her is changing. Even her former manager, Michael Rosenberg, has been back in touch and wants to pave the way for her rehabilitation. "I feel like all my life I have been pushed into a corner. Now I believe I have an opportunity to show a different side to me. I long to skate again in public because I know I can still do it. "I've been given a gift from God and I'm going to use it. I want nothing to do with my past."

Copyright 1999
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