tonya harding in the news again

Harding’s past remains her lifeblood
By SAM MELLINGER
The Kansas City Star
Harding
Harding

Just past 10 on Friday night, and six sanctioned mixed-martial-arts fights combined with more than a thousand beers served have the testosterone of this place on tilt.

One man, visibly drunk for at least a couple of hours now, takes his camcorder up to the winner of the main event and apparently says something unflattering. Within seconds, large, fold-out tables are overturned. Metal chairs fly. The drunk man retreats, but not as fast as the bald and heavily tattooed fighter approaches.

A few feet from where a couple of chairs land, a 5-foot-1 blonde, a former Olympic figure skater, is posing for pictures with customers No. 31 and 32 of the night. Or, at least, she was. She sees the melee and quickly hides.

“I just don’t like violence,” Tonya Harding says. “I know people laugh when they hear me say that, but it’s true.”

Harding is here, watching a low-level fight card at the National Guard Armory in Kansas City, Kan. — “the city so nice they named it twice,” according to the ring announcer — because there are bills to pay.

She charges $10 for an autographed 8-by-10, and her handmade sign advertises $5 if you want a picture taken “with your camara.” Nobody seems to notice the misspelled word.

Harding looks in great shape, about 120 pounds and wearing tight Wrangler jeans with a black T-shirt that reads “The Game of Redneck Life.” This is what 15 minutes looks like stretched to 14 years, which is how long it’s been since the attack on Nancy Kerrigan plotted by Harding’s ex-husband and her former bodyguard, who died last week.

She maintains she knew nothing of the plot but pleaded guilty to hampering the investigation, paid a $160,000 fine and was banned from U.S. Figure Skating competition for life.

The rest of the world has moved on, of course, from one President Bush to the second, from Bryan Adams to Michael Buble. But Harding is, in a lot of ways, stuck to that moment forever, now 37 years old with the same blonde perm she had when “The Wounded Knee” scandal turned her into Public Punchline No. 1.

Her story is at once inspiring and infuriating, worthy of your sympathy and cynicism. She sells her name a few hundred dollars at a time, trying to keep up with her bills, unable or unwilling to get a “normal” job because of everything people still associate with her name.

She recently turned her cable off, she says, because it was a luxury she no longer needed.

“I’m a redneck girl,” she says. “I live in the middle of BFE — or the middle of nowhere, excuse me. I cut wood, drink beer, work on cars, that kind of thing. That’s who I am.”

•••

She still skates. That’s what people always seem to want to know. Yes, she still skates. Just the other day, about 20 minutes into it, she was rocking double-doubles like she was when “America’s Funniest Home Videos” first came out.

That’s a good feeling.

“I was the greatest female figure skater in the world,” she says. “No one, not even most of the men, could touch me, period, at one point. In 1991, I was the best. And nobody could touch me.”

That year, she won the U.S. Nationals and became the first American woman to land a triple axel during competition — it took 14 more years for the second.

Since then, Harding’s bio includes arrests for assault on her boyfriend with a hubcap and driving while intoxicated. Her old bodyguard from the Kerrigan days, Brian Sean Griffith, died Wednesday at 40 of what his doctor said was natural causes. Graphic video of her wedding night was sold by her ex-husband and downloaded across the country. Unauthorized pictures showed up in Penthouse.

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