US figure skaters Tonya Harding (left) and Nancy Kerrigan avoid each other at a training session in Hamar, Norway, during the Winter Olympics ©Getty Images




It was to transpire that Harding's ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, and her bodyguard, Shawn Eckhardt, had hired a hit man, one Shane Stant, to break Kerrigan's right leg so that she would be unable to skate. Stant followed her to Detroit where both she and Harding were due to compete in the US Championships, leapt from behind a curtain in the women's locker room and clubbed her on the thigh a few inches above the knee with a metal baton as she came off the ice after a practice session.

Kerrigan's father Daniel heard her agonised screams and picked her up, TV cameras capturing the moments after the attack as she repeatedly cried out in pain, "Why?, Why?"

Her leg was only badly bruised, not broken, but the injury forced her to withdraw from the national championship. Harding won that event, and they were both controversially selected for the US Olympic team.

Fast forward  to Lillehammer, a pleasant Norwegian village resort where, after seven weeks during  which a surreal story of jealousy, vengeance, deceit and the shocking revelation of a criminal conspiracy had disfigured the world of spins and sequins, the Games began.

Those of us gathered expectantly in the Hamar Olympic Ampitheatre, the venue for the figure skating finals, quickly realised we were to witness what was an Olympic version of Beauty and the Beast On Ice.

The pair had arrived at Lillehammer to find the eyes of the world's media on them.

Nancy Kerrigan was under the media spotlight at the Lillehammer 1994 Olympics
©Getty Images


Hundreds of cameras and reporters crowded the practice rink as the two women were forced to rehearse together, because US officials refused to go against team protocol and let them train at different times.

To say the atmosphere between them was refrigerated is an understatement.

It was not much better in the Athletes' Village: "I felt people looking at me in the restaurant as though I had three heads. It was like, 'Oh, look, there's that girl that was attacked'," Kerrigan said recently.

It wasn't to be the happy ending for Kerrigan everyone had envisaged.

Though gracefully balletic and composed, her routine wasn't quite good enough to get more than the silver behind Ukrainian Oksana Baiul.

Ukrainian Oksana Baiul (centre), Nancy Kerrigan (left) from the United States and Chinese Chen Lu on the podium during the medals' ceremony of the women's figure skating competition at the 1994 Winter Olympic Games ©Getty Images



Inevitably cast as the "baddie", the robustly athletic Harding, all hustle and bustle, suffered a series of mishaps including a broken skate lace, finishing a tearful eighth. But hers were the only moist eyes in the house.

Despite winning the silver, Kerrigan was warned not to attend the Closing Ceremony as it was claimed she posed a security risk following death threats.

All of which resulted in the sixth-highest rated television show in US history.

Only the last episodes of  M*A*S*H,  Dallas' "Who  shot J.R.?", an episode of Roots and two Super Bowls had higher ratings.

Here was a sports blockbuster unlike any other, comparable only to the O.J. Simpson saga which came five months later.

Nearly half the US nation - 48.5 per cent of households -  had watched the women's short programme on February 23, an event that had occurred hours earlier. The huge audience tuned in even though most fans already knew the results from the radio or watching the TV news.

Tonya Harding's Olympics ended in tears, as she finished eighth overall ©Getty Images


Throughout the investigation into the attempted kneecapping, Harding had claimed she had no knowledge about the hit, though Gillooly maintained she had agreed to it.

Gillooly accepted a plea bargain exchange for his testimony against Harding. But he, Stant, Eckhardt, and getaway car driver Derrick Smith all served time in prison for the attack.

Harding herself avoided further prosecution and a possible jail sentence by later pleading guilty to conspiring to hinder prosecution of the attackers. She received three years probation, 500 hours of community service, and a $160,000 (£97,000/€117,000 fine).

She was stripped of her national championship title, and banned from figure skating for life.

Subsequently she has endured 20-years of ignominy. Shortly after the Kerrigan incident, a tape was released called "Wedding Video," of herself and ex-husband Gillooly having sex.

Gillhooly had sold the tape to a tabloid TV show after being implicated as a conspirator in the Kerrigan attack. Stills from the tape were published by Penthouse in September 1994.

Harding has tried to make careers out of being an actress, singer (her group '"Golden Blades" was booed off the stage on their debut gig), racing driver and wrestler.

She also had three losing bouts as a boxer, the second of which on the undercard of a Mike Tyson fight in Memphis in 2003.

From figure skating to boxing, Tonya Harding has tried her hand at a host of things
©Getty Images



There have been several more escapades with the law over the years, including an arrest in 2000 for domestic violence for punching and throwing a hubcap at former boyfriend Darren Silver, for which she served a brief jail sentence.

Now in their early 40s, both women are married with children and have moved on in predictably different ways.

Kerrigan lives in Boston with her three kids and her husband, agent Jerry Solomon. She has built a successful life of endorsements, corporate appearances and skating shows, and will be in Sochi as a skating analyst for NBC. Yet her own private life has not been without incident. In 2010 her father died after a fight with his son, and Nancy's brother, Mark.

Although the family stands by the theory that their 70-year-old father had a pre-existing heart condition that caused his death, Mark was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for assault and battery and involuntary manslaughter.

Harding, who is married with a two-year-old-old son, lives in Oregon, where she joins her third husband Joseph Jens Price on his occasional woodworking jobs.

Of the 1994 affair she says: "It was 20 years ago and I don't remember lots and lots of it. I know it was a horrible time for everyone involved. It was a bad streak, going through all the crud, and I was able to rise above it. I think Nancy and I have good lives now."

But Harding's knowledge of Kerrigan's lifestyle is hardly based on a repaired relationship. They haven't spoken since. "No, never", Kerrigan says. "For what?"

Doubtless Sochi's s Iceberg Skating Palace will provide a hefty quota of drama ranging from the exciting to the esoteric but nothing, I suggest, will be as momentous as the diverse dramas of the anniversary double: The Beauty of the Bolero and the Battle of Wounded Knee.

Alan Hubbard is a sports columnist for the The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.