Tonya Harding

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Tonya Harding figure skating
Tonya harding mac club 1994 crop.jpg

Tonya Harding, 1994
Full name Tonya Maxine Price
nation United StatesUnited States United States
birthday 12th November 1970 (age 49)
place of birth Portland, Oregon
size 155 cm
Weight 48 kg
Career
Trainer Diane Rawlinson
status resigned
End of career 1994
Medal table
World Cup medals 0 × gold 1 × silver 0 × bronze
ISU World figure skating championships
silver Munich 1991 Ladies
 

Tonya Maxine Harding (born November 12, 1970 in Portland , Oregon ; married Tonya Maxine Price ), known as Tonya Harding , is a former American figure skater who started in a single run . Harding became world famous for her connection to an assassination attempt on her rival Nancy Kerrigan on January 6, 1994, which is why she was later banned for life. Her story was filmed in 2017 under the title I, Tonya .

Life

Origin and youth

Tonya Harding had a deceased half-brother. Her father Albert suffered from health problems that made it impossible for him to work at times. Harding claims she was mistreated by her mother, which she denies. Tonya Harding has had asthma since childhood . She started ice skating at an early age and landed her first triple Lutz at the age of twelve . Her mother made many of her costumes. Harding dropped out of school but passed the General Educational Development Test, comparable to a high school diploma .

Figure skating career

In 1986 Harding first took part in the national championships and finished sixth. She won her first medal at national level in 1989 with bronze behind Jill Trenary and Kristi Yamaguchi . In 1991 she became a US champion. In that competition she landed a three-time Axel , the first at US championships in women's competition. At her first world championship she was then runner-up in Munich behind her compatriot Kristi Yamaguchi and ahead of her compatriot Nancy Kerrigan . It was the first time that all women's medalists at a World Cup came from the same country. At this world championship, she was the first American woman and second woman ever after Midori Itō a triple Axel in the freestyle . After 1991 she was no longer a triple Axel. In 1992 she qualified third in the national championships but again for international tournaments. At the 1992 Olympic Games in Albertville, she was fourth and at the 1992 World Championships sixth. In 1993 she placed fourth at the national level and could not qualify for the World Cup.

Assassination attempt on Nancy Kerrigan

Harding became world famous for an assassination attempt on January 6, 1994 on her rival Nancy Kerrigan during training for the US American championship. Her then-husband, Jeff Gillooly, hired and paid the assassin to carry out this assassination attempt. This injured Nancy Kerrigan with an iron bar on the knee, which could not continue the competition as a result. Tonya Harding won the US Championships in 1994, but the title was stripped from her after her links to the assassination became known. She has since been referred to in public as the "Ice Witch".

The investigation was only ended after the 1994 Winter Olympics , so Tonya Harding was able to enforce her participation in the Winter Olympics in court against the opposition of the US NOK . She was only finally convicted of obstructing the investigation. The sentence was three years suspended prison sentence, 500 hours of community service (Harding had to cook and wash in a retirement home), and a fine of $ 160,000. In addition, Harding says it voluntarily donated $ 50,000. Tonya Harding was also banned for life from all figure skating championships.

By the end of 2017, Harding denied knowing anything about her ex-husband's plans. In January 2018, she admitted in an interview that she had heard something of the plans: “That must have been a month or two before. I knew something was going on. I heard how they talked about it. "

Life after figure skating

Together with her husband Jeff Gillooly, Harding shot a pornographic "wedding video", which he sold to the adult magazine Penthouse for an advance of 200,000 US dollars , allegedly without Harding's knowledge.

On June 22, 1994, she appeared in Portland at a show of the then leading Mexican wrestling league Asistencia Asesoría y Administración as manager of the wrestling studio Los Gringos Locos . She had as little success with that as with a role in the low-budget film Breakaway , which came out in theaters in 1996, and a one-off concert as the singer of her band The Golden Blades in Portland in 1995.

In late 1996, Harding made headlines in the local press for resuscitating 81-year-old Alice Olson, who had collapsed unconscious in a Portland bar, using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. In 2002 and 2003, Harding tried her hand as a boxer, catcher and ice hockey player. In 2007 she worked as a part-time car dealer and also took care of car care for friends and acquaintances, trained boxers and gave an autograph session “every two months”. In March 2008, she commented on The Smoking Gun Presents: World's Dumbest series for TruTV .

Harding was married to Michael Smith from 1995 to 1996, then lived alone "deep in the forest" near an 800-person village, where she fished and hunted, and on June 23, 2010 married her third husband, Joseph Jens Price . With him she has a son who was born on February 19, 2011.

Harding in media, opera, film and literature

Lyricist Elizabeth Searle and composer Abigail Al-Doory turned the duel between Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan into their chamber opera Tonya and Nancy: The Opera , which premiered in May 2006 at Tufts University , directed by Meron Langsner. The song Tonya Harding by The Coathangers from Atlanta is about the spectacular assassination attempt, as is the song Tonyas Twirls by the US folk musician Loudon Wainwright III. on his album Social Studies (1999). Comedian and musician Weird Al Yankovic also dedicated one of his parodies to Tonya Harding with Headline News (1994). In the book Women on Ice: Feminist Essays on the Tonya Harding / Nancy Kerrigan Spectacle (1995), Tonya Harding's media marketing was critically analyzed in several essays . The star interviewed Harding in March 2007 for the category "What is actually doing ...?". There Harding said of the assassination attempt on Nancy Kerrigan: “God alone knows the answer, what really happened. I didn't know about the attack on Nancy. My ex-husband had arranged it alone. But I can't get rid of the reputation of being a beast. "

The 1996 Simpsons episode "Team Homer" alludes to the attack: Moe Szyslak injures Charles Montgomery Burns with a crowbar in the knee so that he cannot start the bowling tournament.

In May 2012, Harding spoke about her new role as a mother for a documentary for the news portal Inside Edition . The American TV station NBC produced the documentary Nancy & Tonya (directed by Mary Carillo ) in 2014 .

On September 8, 2017, the had biopic I, Tonya of Craig Gillespie at the Toronto Film Festival premiere. The title role of Tonya Harding is played by Margot Robbie , who, according to her own statement, initially did not know that the plot of the film was based on a true story. Sebastian Stan can be seen as Jeff Gillooly. Critics praised the film, in which Harding can be seen in an interview scene in which she reports that she was abused as a child and in her first marriage, but that she experienced the worst abuse by the media and the public.

The American musician Sufjan Stevens has released a song about Tonya Harding on Asthmatic Kitty .

In the second season of American Dad , the episode A Bride Just in Case alluded to the assassination attempt on Nancy Kerrigan , in which Roger smashed the kneecap of a couple's partner with an iron bar in a figure skating competition to win the competition .

Results

Competition / year 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994
winter Olympics 4th 8th.
World championships 2. 6th
American championships 6th 5. 5. 3. 7th 1. 3. 4th (1.)*

* The title was subsequently stripped of her because of the iron bar attack on her competitor Nancy Kerrigan

Web links

Commons : Tonya Harding  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b After 24 years Tonya Harding makes a confession. In: welt.de. welt.de, January 4, 2018, accessed on May 10, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c d What is ... Tonya Harding actually doing? In: stern.de. Stern , March 4, 2007, accessed November 4, 2017 .
  3. ^ Breakaway , imdb.com. Retrieved November 4, 2017.
  4. ↑ Cynthia Baughman (ed.): Women On Ice: Feminist Responses to the Tonya Harding / Nancy Kerrigan Spectacle , London (Routledge) 1995
  5. ↑ Episode “Team Homer”, Season 07 Episode 12 (1996), 19:01 min, cf. also simpsonspedia
  6. ↑ EXCLUSIVE: Tonya Harding Talks About Being A Mother , insideedition.com.
  7. ↑ Joyce Eng: NBC Revisits Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding Scandal in "Fascinating Character Study". In: tvguide.com from February 21, 2014
  8. ↑ Margot Robbie thought the story of her new figure skating biopic "I, Tonya" was completely fictional , filmstarts.de
  9. ↑ Toronto Film Review: Margot Robbie in 'I, Tonya' , variety.com.
personal data
SURNAME Harding, Tonya
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Harding, Tonya Maxine (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American figure skater
DATE OF BIRTH November 12, 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Portland , Oregon