"I don't see anybody as my top competitors. I see myself as my top competitor. I'm the one I have to beat."
-- Tonya Harding, after winning the 1994 U.S. championship
No one really believes such a practiced sound bite, least of all the skaters themselves. But Tonya Harding is not -- nor has she ever been -- like most skaters. She is neither politic nor polished, sociable nor sophisticated. Instead, she is the bead of raw sweat in a field of dainty perspirers; the asthmatic who heaves uncontrollably while others pant prettily; the pool- playing, drag-racing, trash-talking bad girl of a sport that thrives on illusion and politesse. While rivals fairly float through their programs, she's the skater who best bullies gravity. She fights it off like a mugger, stroking the ice hard, pushing it away the same way she brushes off fans who pester her for autographs. So when Harding says her demons are all internal, she is neither psyching herself up nor talking herself down for TV. She is speaking the truth.
She wants gold at the Olympics and the rewards of fame. "To be perfectly honest," she said last week, "what I'm really thinking about is dollar signs." And so to the creed of the Games -- faster, higher, stronger -- she adds words she knows all too well. Harder. Longer. Badder. She has worked so hard, tried for so long, wanted so bad. But always the gossamer princesses seduced fortune and celebrity away, leaving her with only ire and ice. And one in particular kept crossing her path -- until they both reached Detroit two weeks ago.
The Jan. 6 attack on skater Nancy Kerrigan was shocking and chilling enough. But when the rumblings began that Harding or her entourage might somehow be involved, a grimly familiar tale of random violence turned into something far more gothic. Even people without the faintest interest in the crystalline world of figure skating could not help marveling at the spectacle. Did the scrappy girl from the trailer parks, who has climbed so high and suffered so much, possibly plot to destroy her rival? Or did her violently jealous husband assemble a gang of goons to act without her knowledge but on her behalf? If so, was the motive love or money? If not, why are others smearing his name with dirt? And if Tonya Harding turns out to be innocent, how searing must it be that more than a few people could imagine her guilt?
Certainly Harding was tarnished by the company she kept. One suspect after another was taken into custody, even as the reports circulated that Tonya herself and her husband Jeff Gillooly were under investigation. On Thursday police in Oregon arrested her hulking bodyguard, Shawn Eckardt, 26, who went to high school with Gillooly. Eckardt's lawyer, Mark McKnight, said his client had admitted to authorities that he had taken part in the plot, but was "not smart enough" to have designed or carried out the plan. The police also arrested Derrick Smith, 29, another bruiser, described by neighbors as having a taste for wearing camouflage and "playing army." Both Eckardt and Smith were charged with conspiracy to commit the assault on Kerrigan. Eckardt quickly made bail and was released.