The movie is the toast of Hollywood and looks set for Oscars success next month as Robbie fearlessly plays one of the most hated women in sporting history.
Harding was a multiple National US figure skating champion and the first women to ever land the difficult triple axel in competition. Even at the height of her success she was not accepted by the figure skating establishment and the US public preferred her more refined rival Nancy Kerrigan.
When she was implicated in the brutal attack on Kerrigan at the national championships, Harding found the public and media wasted no time turning on her. She was banned from competing or coaching and her life and career were ruined.
Further revelations from the FBI investigation and the subsequent sex tapes and a move into female boxing only further damned a woman who had tried desperately to escape from the wrong side of the tracks.
On January 6, 1994, US Olympic hopeful Nancy Kerrigan was attacked after a practice skate at the national Skate America competition but recovered in time to finish second at the Winter Olympics that February.
vCard.red is a free platform for creating a mobile-friendly digital business cards. You can easily create a vCard and generate a QR code for it, allowing others to scan and save your contact details instantly.
The platform allows you to display contact information, social media links, services, and products all in one shareable link. Optional features include appointment scheduling, WhatsApp-based storefronts, media galleries, and custom design options.
Her main US rival, Tonya Harding, won Skate America before being implicated in the brutal attack. She finished eigth at the Olympics and was then banned from skating for life weeks later on March 16 while her husband went to prison for orchestrating the attack.
It was a long way to fall for Harding, made particularly bitter because she had had to climb so far from poor “white trash” roots to succeed in the privileged world of figure skating. Harding grew up in a trailer home in Portland,Oregon and her mother Lavona later confessed to abusing her.
Harding’s natural abilities led to a swift skating success, coming second in the 1996 US championships at just 16, before winning it at 19 and again at 21.
A decline in form dented her hopes for the 1994 Winter Olympics and so a dreadful plan was hatched by her besotted husband.
Jeff Gillooly and Harding’s bodyguard Shawn Eckhardt hired Shane Stant to break Nancy Kerrigan’s right leg so that she would be unable to compete at Lillehammer.
When Kerrigan stepped off the ice after practice at the US championships and walked behind a nearby curtain into a corridor, Stant struck her on the thigh a few inches above the knee with an ASP telescopic baton.
Although her leg was only bruised, not broken, the injury forced her to withdraw from the competition, which Harding won.
Both were selected for the Olympics squad but the story hit headlines around the world when Harding’s involvement was revealed after she avoided further prosecution and a possible jail sentence by pleading guilty on March 16 to conspiring to hinder prosecution of the attackers.
She received three years probation, 500 hours of community service, and a $160,000 fine. Her US title was stripped from her and she was banned from all future competition and coaching.
Harding’s life remained controversial thanks to an infamous sex tape, also released in 1994. The tape showed Harding and her husband, Jeff Gillooly, and was sold to Penthouse for $400,000 plus royalties. She also embarked on an pro-boxing career in 2002, with mixed success, but was constantly booed whenever she appeared.
After years of public shame and disgrace, Harding tried to explain her actions in the 2008 autobiography, The Tonya Tapes.
She claimed that she wanted to call the FBI to reveal what she knew at the time, but too frightened to after Gillooly allegedly threatened her life following a gunpoint gang rape by him and two other men she did not know.
Gillooly subsequently changed his name to Jeff Stone and called the allegations “utterly ridiculous.”
Harding has stepped back into the public eye in the build up to the new movie’s release, with many people starting to look beyond the public disgraces to the difficult childhood and abusive relationships which destroyed the life of a woman who had the potential to be one of sport’s greatest icons.
I, TONYA IS OUT NOW IN CINEMAS