The duel Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, fantasy of an America hungry for melodramas<

The flounces of her almond-green leotard embellished with rhinestones barely have time to twirl. After three and a half laps more than four feet high, 21-year-old Tonya Harding falls back onto the ice at the Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

His muscular thighs did not shake. The young woman, pulled back ponytail and bulging bangs, cannot suppress a cry of joy. His hands clench briefly into fists, before resuming their choreography. The skater from Portland (Oregon) knows it: she has entered the history of her discipline.

In the middle of the 1991 United States championship, Tonya Harding became the first American to perform a triple axel, and won the competition. But the coronation will be short-lived. And the rest of Tonya Harding's life a long and painful fall.

Because Tonya Harding is not Nancy Kerrigan, her eternal rival. As dark as she is blonde. As tall and slender as she is small and powerful. As feminine as she is "tomboyish" - "I've always hated the word femininity, which reminds me of tampons or sanitary napkins," says Tonya Harding.

It's the "ice princess" against "the little barracuda", as Tonya Harding's former trainer, Dody Teachman, called them. A fratricidal duel brought to light by the release, Wednesday, February 21, of the feature film Me, Tonya by Craig Gillespie.

“Why, why, why?

In memories, the Harding-Kerrigan clash is mostly a cry. That of a young woman dressed in a white lace bodysuit, collapsed in a hallway of the Cobo Arena in Detroit (Michigan). In a haunting voice, Nancy Kerrigan, shouts: “Why, why, why? (“Why, why, why?”).

On January 6, 1994, six weeks before the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, the young hope of American figure skating – bronze medalist at the 1992 Olympics, 1993 United States champion – was just assaulted, just after his warm-up. A few centimeters above her right knee, a man hit her with a telescopic baton before fleeing.

The investigation is progressing quickly. The police find the man who tried to break the destiny of the one who was programmed to shine. For 6,500 dollars, Shane Stant, 22 years old and a physique fed on barrels of protein and UV, agreed to “eliminate a skater”.

The Achilles heel refused

It was a phone call that allowed him to win the contract. On Boxing Day 1993, Shane Stant drove twenty-two hours from Arizona to Portland to meet the masterminds of the attack: Shawn Eckhardt, Tonya Harding's former bodyguard, and Jeff Gillooly, her ex-husband. blockquote class="twitter-tweet">

@Sarahendipity42 @naimeiyao @ketzal With $750 a day I would hire a private investigator to find their parents. I wo… https://t.co/GtLYa3KgU9

After initially considering severing Nancy Kerrigan's Achilles tendon - a request that Stant refuses - the three men agree to target the sportswoman's right leg. The one on which it lands during jumps. The one without which she will not be able to be part of the American Olympic team. The one who, unable to compete, above all guarantees Tonya Harding a little more of her ticket to the Games.

The scandal breaks out. It is "the ultimate marriage of the power of big events and the power of voyeurism", summarizes Dick Ebersol, then boss of NBC Sports.

Nancy Kerrigan’s injury isn’t that bad though. The skater is finally on the Olympic trip, just like Tonya Harding – the American Olympic committee is considering an exclusion for a time, but retracts under the threat of a lawsuit from the Harding clan. On the Norwegian ice, the two athletes share a training, but not a look. Nancy Kerrigan, however, wears the same outfit as the day of her attack – difficult not to see a gesture of defiance.

126.6 million Americans watching TV

For the short program event, 126.6 million Americans are in front of their small screen – the fourth highest audience in history American TV at the time, according to L'Equipe. Rebelote for the free program.

Nancy Kerrigan, the brown angel, skates like never before, but has to settle for silver. A CBS camera forgotten in a corridor of the Olympic ice rink films the blonde Tonya Harding, panicked by a broken shoelace that must be replaced at short notice. Disheveled, the young woman made her late entrance, rushed forward before bursting into tears in front of the jury, holding her foot. She fails in eighth place.

A few weeks later, in March, Jeff Gillooly and Eckhardt pleaded guilty to racketeering. While denying having participated in the conspiracy, Tonya Harding, to avoid any trial, pleads guilty to obstruction of justice. She claims to have learned of the attack after the fact, and only admits that she did not immediately notify the police. She was sentenced to three years probation, 500 hours of community service, and a fine of $160,000 (about 130,000 euros). The American Figure Skating Association banned her permanently.

“I have always been the villain of the story”

Her life, therefore, is nothing but a series of inaudible justifications. Nobody wants to believe in the innocence of the one whose name becomes synonymous with treason – “I would not do a” Tonya Harding “”, promises Barack Obama during his campaign for the Democratic primary in 2007.

Who could believe, after all, this child of “white-trash” America who has dishonored herself? “I have always been the villain of the story”, she analyzes, lucid. Because Tonya Harding comes from a disadvantaged social background. “As a child, she skated on ZZ Top when the others glided on Mozart,” writes the New York Times in a long portrait devoted to the sportswoman on the occasion of the film's release.

Above all, Tonya Harding comes from an abusive family. In the press, the skater tells how her parents shot her one day in anger. How his mother, an alcoholic, sewed his costumes "stuffing them with sequins so that his thighs were cut off". "I was told I was fat. That I was ugly. That I would never do anything with my life,” she told the NYT.

A violence from which she will escape only to end up in the arms of a husband who strikes her just as much. He will also sell in September 1994 the video of their sexual intercourse during their wedding night for 200,000 dollars at Penthouse.

“She was a princess”

Nancy Kerrigan was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth either. Her father, a welder, used the resurfacer at the Woburn (Massachusetts) rink to finance his daughter's training hours. His mother, almost blind, was straining the family budget to buy him designer suits by New York designer Vera Wang.

But with her young premiere physique and haughty bearing, Nancy catches the eye. She quickly landed advertising contracts with Campbell, Ray-Ban, Reebok soups, became the face of Disney… “She was a princess, and I was a lot of shit”, summarized Tonya Harding in 2014.

Professional boxer

Fallen, Tonya Harding will never return to the ice rinks, and tries to make a living on her name. It is first of all an incursion into Hollywood, into an action film. Arrested for drunken driving, she distinguished herself in 1994 in a wrestling gala, then in the American show Celebrity Boxing, where she knocked out Paula Jones, the woman who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment. The former skater tried to become a professional boxer in 2003, but gave up - the fault of her asthma, officially -, without having managed to shed her image as an outcast.

Several times, however, she tries to justify herself in television shows. But it contradicts itself, struggles to convince those who do not want to be convinced. “I disappointed a whole country, how is that even possible? “, she wonders in front of Oprah Winfrey, the star of American television.

For the twenty years of the "affair", two documentaries on the decline of the former virtuoso of the skates are broadcast. Director Steven Rogers is buying the film rights for $1,500. In Me, Tonya, the skater is played by Australian actress Margot Robbie, who is working to restore the tarnished image of the former “ugly duckling” of ice rinks. It was not until January, for the promotion of the film, that Tonya Harding finally confessed to having "heard things, people talking" before the attack on Nancy Kerrigan.

"For a girl like me, playing nice and according to the rules would never have allowed me to go anywhere," summarizes Tonya Harding at the New York Times. If I had succeeded, it would have seemed that I was the embodiment of the American dream. Now, I'm just the embodiment of American. »