U.S. figure skaters Nancy Kerrigan, left, and Tonya Harding on the ice during an Olympic practice session in Hamar, Norway, in 1994. (Associated Press file)
The media frenzy that was Tonya Harding vs. Nancy Kerrigan in 1994 was a clash that reverberated well beyond the sports world. More than an athletic rivalry, eventually it became more than a crazy premeditated plot that shook the foundations of U.S. ice skating. Tonya vs. Nancy and "the whack heard round the world," leading up to the Lillehammer, Norway, Winter Games, arguably was the start of a tabloid mentality that changed the way media operate. It may even have changed the trajectory of modern journalism.
It was tabloid journalism's first mainstream twizzle.
Twenty years later, on Feb. 23, NBC will broadcast a new documentary revisiting the spectacle, reported by NBC Olympics correspondent Mary Carillo.
"Nancy & Tonya" will air at 6 p.m. Sunday on Channel 9, prior to the closing ceremony of the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
The scandal touched a nerve, with its overlay of often erroneous story lines (ice princess versus trailer trash), drawing enormous interest from gossip rags to elite newsrooms.
Several months before the O.J. Simpson low-speed freeway chase, the Tonya vs. Nancy smackdown revealed the enormous public appetite for salacious headlines. The media veered toward soap-operatic news to serve that interest.
The attack
When Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed in the right knee by a stranger after practice on the eve of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit, the first fear that went through the public's imagination was that female athletes were being targeted. Just weeks earlier, tennis star Monica Seles had been stabbed in the back with a knife by an on-court attacker. Was a pattern emerging?
Days later it became clear that rival Harding's ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, conspired with equally bumbling pals Shawn Eckhardt and Shane Stant to physically assault Kerrigan in order to knock her out of competition. The ensuing media attention, fueling the public's fascination with the personalities involved, opened a new chapter in the definition of breaking news.
Scott Hamilton, gold medal Olympian and current NBC figure skating analyst, offers the documentary's most succinct summary of the effects on the press. At the first Olympics practice in Lillehammer, he said, "I saw press jammed into this one little area. I saw The Washington Post, People magazine, The New York Times, the National Enquirer. And they were all equals. This may have changed skating a little but it changed media forever."
Clips of Tom Brokaw, Connie Chung and others reporting the news remind us what a compelling, global story this was. New interviews with both Kerrigan and Harding, along with former coaches and sports journalists who covered the story, fill out Carillo's report.
Although the hour sets out to correct certain misconceptions — Harding explains she wasn't "trailer trash," Kerrigan explains she wasn't "whining" after being hit — viewers may come away with first impressions reinforced.
"I grew up with what is called a blue spoon instead of the silver spoon," Harding says. "We moved around a lot and we lived in our trailer in between places we had to live."
We see the two of them posing side by side in a U.S. team photo three days after the attack: "It just felt strange," Harding said at the time. "Always looking for somebody to run out and do what they did to Nancy to other people, including myself."
Kerrigan says, "I had people asking me, 'Do you think she had anything to do with it?' And I, my reaction to that was, 'That's ridiculous.' To me, this had to have been some random act."
Pre-Internet pace
Younger viewers may marvel at the slow, contained nature of this soap opera from two decades ago. After all, there was no Internet, no viral video. The whole tawdry affair played out on television, radio and in print, bringing socioeconomic prejudices to the fore, calling the stereotype of the figure-skating ice princess into question and shining a national spotlight on a bunch of inept, small-minded criminals. (The perpetrators served time; Harding avoided jail but pleaded guilty to conspiring to hinder prosecution of the attackers and was given three years probation, 500 hours of community service, a fine, was stripped of her title and was required to quit the U.S. Figure Skating Association.)
If it happened today, not only would the facts spill faster, but there probably would be GIFs, Instagrams and cellphone footage of the moment from bystanders at 100 different angles.
In the intervening years, Harding did reality TV, a celebrity sex tape, a professional wrestling show. She's now a married mother of one, in perpetual denial about some aspects of the past, demonstrating for the camera how she enjoys cutting down trees as a landscaper.
Kerrigan is a married mother of three, allowing the camera to follow her as she drives the carpool, commenting on the tedium of a parent's daily routine. Kerrigan was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2004.
Harding still seems to relish the screen time. Kerrigan seems less shy than she once was. Neither is as enjoyable talking about themselves as they are in the vintage skating footage, silently soaring and bending to music. That's another takeaway beyond what Nancy and Tonya meant for media coverage: sadly, our delight in the fantastical, graceful, storytelling on ice doesn't have much to do with the reality of the athletes off the rink.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830, jostrow@denverpost.com or twitter.com/ostrowdp
No comments:
Post a Comment