Renegade Harding Returns Embattled Figure Skater To Make Her Pro Debut Prior To Hockey Game

If Tonya Harding was talking, she might have something to say about making her skating comeback on the same ice with a minor-league hockey team called the Renegades.

Since she’s not - unless someone pays her to do so - Harding will have to let others draw conclusions about her pro debut tonight.

“Tonya’s kind of averse to talking,” her agent, David Hans Schmidt, said. “We just don’t look at it as necessary for her.”

Skating’s bad girl, banned for life from amateur competition, returns to the ice in a 2-minute exhibition skate before the Reno Renegades play the Alaska Gold Kings at the Reno Convention Center.

That is, assuming she’s not abducted by space aliens or picked for the Bolivian Olympic team before her scheduled skate at the Reno Convention Center.

It’s a coming out party of sorts for Harding, last heard from only 10 days ago when she told police she was kidnapped while going out to her pickup truck for a cigarette.

And guess what? There are people who want to see her.

“There’s a big trailer-park crowd behind Tonya,” Schmidt said. “And middle-class America is really for her.”

A spokesman for the Renegades said Harding’s appearance is expected to be the team’s first sellout of the year in the 4,434-seat arena, where the Renegades average about 2,500 fans a game.

Some of those will be guests invited by a Reno casino that is paying Harding an undisclosed amount of money to skate and later mingle with high-rollers at a cocktail party.

Harding, who trains at the Clackamas Town Center mall in the Portland area, will be making her first public skating appearance since her tearful showing at the Lillehammer Olympics.

The ever-enterprising Schmidt hopes it will lead to other exhibitions, perhaps between periods of NHL games or with professional ice shows. Schmidt wrote all 26 NHL teams a few months ago but has yet to get any deals.

“We’re entertaining some NHL offers for Tonya,” he said. “Figure skating has always been considered an elite sport while the average hockey goers drink beer, eat pretzels and get rowdy. Tonya herself is known for not coming from a prima donna gang and we’re willing to take a shot at it.”

Harding, who is still on probation for her role in the attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan three years ago, plans to skate a simple routine without any attempts at her signature triple axel.

At least that’s what Schmidt says, since he refuses to allow Tonya to talk to the media unless they’re paying for the privilege. Schmidt said he has sold exclusive deals for Tonya to talk to a few television shows.

“She is some kind of enigma right now and we’d like to keep it that way for the time being,” Schmidt said.

Just how much of an enigma can be argued after Harding’s latest escapade, in which she told police she was kidnapped and forced to drive a man around before escaping by running her pickup truck into a tree.

This was after a night spent at the same tavern where Tonya last year claimed to have saved a woman’s life by giving her CPR.

And it came at a time the U.S. Figure Skating championships were taking place in Nashville, leading some to think Harding might have been trying to steal the spotlight from the sport.

“I don’t know what to think about her,” said world champion Todd Eldredge. “Who knows what’s going to happen with her. Maybe she’ll show up in a competition somewhere.”

That’s unlikely, although Schmidt said he may petition U.S. figure skating officials for reinstatement later this year and, if that fails, shop for another country that Harding could compete for in next year’s Olympics.

“Tonya really wants to skate for the U.S. and represent the red, white and blue as she did in two previous Olympics,” Schmidt said. “If that is not a possibility we would look elsewhere.”

That might be her only option, judging from the reaction of U.S. skating officials to a skater they consider an embarrassment to the sport.

“She has been banned for life from our competitions,” said Jerry Lace, executive director of the U.S. Figure Skating Association. “What she does in other areas is of no concern to us. She will not skate in USFSA events.”