Nancy, Tonya Forever Linked

Nancy Kerrigan is the mother of 5-year-old Matthew, a wife to Jerry Solomon, a happy skater in on-ice productions of “Grease” and “Footloose” and honored by iParenting.com as a wonderful example of a working mother.

Tonya Harding was evicted from her house two weeks ago and she told a judge at her eviction hearing that “unfortunately, me and my dog are going to sleep in a Corvette roadster.” Two years before that, Harding was in court answering charges after she threw a hubcap at the knees of her live-in boyfriend at the time.

They are still opposites, Nancy and Tonya, always to be linked by one ugly act.

Two days before the start of the 1994 U.S. championships, which served as the Olympic figure skating trials, Kerrigan was attacked by a man who clubbed her in the knee then fled by smashing through a window at the practice facility in Detroit.

It turned out the attack had been carried out by some of the less-upstanding acquaintances of Harding’s husband at the time, Jeff Gillooly. The attackers claimed Harding hatched the plot. Harding said she was coerced into going along with Gillooly and his mates who wanted to make sure Kerrigan was disabled for the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics, giving Harding a clearer shot at a medal and the great riches they were sure would follow.

The Tonya-Nancy story enveloped those Games and helped make figure skating an even more popular sport. After some legal maneuvering, Harding, who had won the Olympic trial in Kerrigan’s absence, was allowed on the U.S. team with Kerrigan, who had been given the second U.S. spot and who had spent six weeks rehabbing her badly bruised knee.

Every U.S. practice, with Harding and Kerrigan on the ice together, was a zoo.

Harding caused a break in the long program when she stopped skating seconds into her routine and burst into tears because her skate lace broke.

Kerrigan, meanwhile, skated the two best programs of her life only to finish second in a controversial decision that gave the gold to Ukraine’s Oksana Baiul.

Harding, a two-time U.S. champion, ended up doing community service for her role in covering up the Kerrigan attack. And her life has been nothing but scandal since 1994. She spent three days in jail for the attack on her boyfriend. She has recently been a contestant on the TV show “The Weakest Link,” with other notorious celebrity contestants such as Gennifer Flowers, Darva Conger and Kato Kaelin.

She tried skating in one pro-am competition in West Virginia, but the lifetime ban the U.S. Figure Skating Assn. handed down after the Kerrigan attack kept her from pursuing her skating career in most of the lucrative pro-ams, many of which exist because of the attention Harding brought to the sport.

Kerrigan, meanwhile, married Solomon, who was her agent in Lillehammer. Kerrigan, too, received some bad publicity when she was seen as an unhappy silver medalist and especially when, as a guest at Disneyland shortly after her performance, Kerrigan was caught saying that “This was the corniest thing I ever did,” while sitting next to Mickey Mouse.

She has, however, settled quietly into a Massachusetts home with Solomon and their son. She actively works for charities, especially those affiliated with blindness because her mother is blind.

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Diane Pucin