Skating’s ‘Bad Girl’ A Boon For Sport Tonya Harding Circus Created A New Image

There was Nancy Kerrigan, her face contorted in agony as she clutched her right knee and wailed, “Why me? Why me?” There was Tonya Harding, the cigarette-smoking, pickup-driving bad girl, telling everyone she was going to “kick some butt.”

Figure skating’s image as a lightweight sport of dainty ice princesses died with the whack heard ‘round the world. While embarrassing, the circus surrounding the 1994 Olympics turned out to be the best thing to happen to the sport.

Now figure skating is on television almost every weekend, and only pro football draws more viewers. U.S. champion Todd Eldredge owns a Ferrari, and he hasn’t even turned “pro.” Hundreds of skating rinks are being built nationwide, and coaches can barely keep up with demand.

“The coaches all laugh and say, ‘Let’s everybody pay homage to Tonya. She brought a lot of business into the rinks,” said David Lowery, a coach at the Tampa Bay (Fla.) Skating Academy and past president of the Professional Skaters Association.

“You look back with mixed emotions,” he said. “That’s a terrible reputation for our women to have. But at the same time, she brought (figure skating) to the attention of the nation.”

Figure skating has always been the most popular Winter Olympics sport, particularly among women and nonsports fans who were drawn to its grace and beauty. But once the games ended, so did skating’s drawing power.

Sure, there were the ice shows that made the rounds every year and an occasional competition on television, but people didn’t pay too much attention unless it was an Olympics year.

Tonya and a crew of bumbling misfits changed that with the attack on Kerrigan at the U.S. championships. The saga got stranger by the day, and people couldn’t get enough of it.

Could Nancy skate at the Olympics? Would Tonya leave her on-again, off-again husband? Would the two skaters make nice in Lillehammer or would there be a rumble on the ice?

The women’s technical program - the Tonya-Nancy showdown - and the free skate at Lillehammer drew the fourth- and sixth-highest ratings of any TV shows up to that point. Not just for 1994. Forever.

“It was the ultimate soap opera, and consequently, people who were only in a small peripheral manner interested in figure skating were now caught up in it, intrigued by it and they watched all of it,” said Michael Rosenberg, a top agent who represented Harding until two months before the attack.

And they didn’t stop once the games ended. Ice shows were immediate sellouts and TV networks clamored for more skating. Skaters who once would have made a decent living on tour were suddenly millionaires.

Between the networks and cable stations, there are now dozens of hours of skating on television: competitions, pro-ams, made-for-TV ice shows - Scott Hamilton even had a TV variety special earlier this year.

People who had never skated began pouring into rinks after the 1994 Olympics, and they haven’t stopped. Many said they were there “because Nancy and Tonya did it,” said Donald Bartelson, who owns the Ontario Ice Skating Center in Ontario, Calif.

“Once it took hold, it kept going,” said Kathy Casey, one of America’s top figure skating coaches.

“Some of us thought, ‘Oh, perhaps this is just a special year. It’ll go down.’ Negative. It’s held right on.”

But not everyone is convinced the Kerrigan attack deserves all the credit.

Morry Stillwell, USFSA president, won’t deny it gave figure skating some recognition. But it was a temporary boost that has nothing to do with the crowded ice rinks today, he said.

“It produced a blip for about six months. The effect was very short-term,” Stillwell said. “I think the rivalry between Nancy and Oksana (Baiul) probably had more of a long-term effect than the silliness out of Portland.

“You talk to people now and they say, ‘Tonya who?”’

Rosenberg agrees there was more to skating’s increased popularity than the Nancy-Tonya saga.

He said an “A-minus sport became a Triple A sport” because of the attack, but he thinks the current growth spurt really began years before, with the Calgary Games in 1988.

That’s when Brian Boitano won the gold medal in the “Battle of the Brians” with Canada’s Brian Orser, and Katarina Witt and Debi Thomas both skated to “Carmen.”

“The explosion part was Nancy-Tonya. But I really think Calgary was the biggest event,” Rosenberg said. “That’s what set up something like a Nancy-Tonya. It made it possible for us to go through the roof.”