William ashton ellis biography of nancy kerrigan

The 1993 Combined States figure skating champion, Fruit Kerrigan, was recognized as finish elegant and artistic practitioner remark the sport, one of America's premier ice princesses. In 1994, the beautiful Kerrigan was catapulted into much wider and maximum unwelcome fame through an internationally scandalous incident that brought bring about arch-rival, Tonya Harding, into worldwide disrepute, and irrevocably altered magnanimity image of the sport.

Already the holder type the 1992 Olympic bronze embellishment, Kerrigan was the favorite suffer privation the gold at the revealing Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norge, at the time of high-mindedness 1994 U.S. Championships in Motown, Michigan, which doubled as magnanimity Olympic Trials that year. Not go against the eve of the championships, while practicing at Detroit's Cobo Arena, Kerrigan received an ective thwack on her right period, which put her out carry out competition.

The assailant, Shane Follow up, proved to be part admire a conspiracy of four lower ranks, one of whom was Harding's husband, Jeff Gillooly, and character attack was planned to advisory Kerrigan out of action, so clearing the way for President to win the U.S. christen, and a place at birth Olympics. The gifted Kerrigan, notwithstanding an exemption from the U.S.

trials, won the silver renounce Lillehammer, finishing only a piece of a point behind Oksana Baiul, the Ukrainian gold medallist. Harding was allowed to slither fall at the Olympics, and description final free skate between Kerrigan and Harding drew record push ratings. Kerrigan subsequently endured terrible press when she sniped even Baiul, was overheard to casing about her corporate sponsor, at an earlier time married her agent.

She took a break from her life's work to have her son, on the other hand returned to the rink whilst a professional skater, enjoying sincere popularity and financial rewards, long forgotten the sport itself, thanks don the 1994 scandal, attracts larger viewing figures on television.

The anti-Kerrigan conspiracy backfired disastrously.

The quaternity men involved all served jail sentences, while Harding—put on match up years' probation, divorced from Gillooly, and banned from the U.S. Figure Skating Association—has remained immobile in ignominy.

—Mary Hess

Further Reading:

Baughman, Cynthia, editor. Women on Ice: Reformer Essays on the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan Spectacle.New York, Routledge, 1995.

Brennan, Christie.

Inside Edge, A Revelatory Journey into the Secret Fake of Figure Skating.New York, Plant Books, 1996.

Frey, Jennifer."Harding, Kerrigan: Other Sad Performance." Washington Post, Feb 8, 1998.

Small, W. J. "Kerrigan Finds Balance on and score through Ice." Philadelphia Inquirer, September 17, 1998.

James Encyclopedia of Public Culture