Who Really Attacked Nancy Kerrigan?! The Tonya Harding Story

[Music] hey guys and welcome back to my channel so this is actually gonna be my last video of 2019 isn't that crazy did this year not go by so fast today I have a video for you guys on a I guess you could call it like a sporting scandal it's a really interesting moment history that I am really intrigued by honestly and have been for a while I've been wanting to make a video on this since the movie I Tanya came out about two years ago so I wanted to go ahead and cover this story I think you guys are gonna find this really interesting today we're going to be talking about the world of ice skating and I know it doesn't sound super intriguing but this story definitely is and we are going to be talking about what led up to this moment right here but before we get into the story of Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan this video was kindly sponsored by justify so I have been recently introduced to these case defy phone cases and it has been a real lifesaver for me because they have something 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automatically applied now let's go ahead and get started talking about Tonya Harding so this is Tanya Maxine Harding she was born on November 12 1970 in Portland Oregon she grew up in the East Portland area and she was very young when she first got into ice skating and the story kind of goes that her parents took her to a local mall and there was a little ice skating rink and Tanya when she was only three years old stepped out onto the ice skating rink and could skate pretty well right away and instantly fell in love with the sport and the rest was history and her parents really her mom wasted no time she saw a lot of talent in Tanya early on so she got her into a skating competition that year when she was three and she had already won in ice skating competition for she turned four years old so this quickly became her life before she even really knew what was going on but how she grew up Tania didn't just have a love for Figure Skating she had a love for competition this girl was extremely driven very very tough and very athletic she was just into being active and she really calls herself a tomboy I don't really like the term tomboy I think it's so stupid but that's kind of what she was in addition to her ice skating which is you know very feminine and dainty sport she was into hunting and drag racing and car mechanics as well but Tonya was different than other girls within the ice skating world I mean oftentimes people who are in ice skating have a decent amount of money I'm not saying everyone who's an ice skater is rich by any means but it is one of those sports that cost a lot of money to be a part of it and your average family a lot of the times will struggle to be a part of it if they can even afford it at all Tonya's family barely got by they had really no extra money to spend on anything and every extra penny that either of her parents made went towards her ice skating career so that's a lot of pressure on her she didn't have the most ideal upbringing G group and a trailer she said she often found her parents stressing out over money her mom was working as a waitress and working pretty much all the time to keep her in the ice-skating world and her dad was pretty unstable he bounced her on between jobs he went from being a truck driver to an apartment manager just things were never stable and secure for Tanya growing up her father actually had various health problems which is the reason why he lost a lot of the jobs he struggled with his mental health from being physically sick I mean the two go hand-in-hand and so Tonya's mom at times had to be the only one supporting the family and as a waitress that was not easy she had to pretty much bust her ass all the time and Tonya's mom was really not a happy person if you have seen the movie I Tonya and Allison Janney's representation of her so good it's very accurate her mom was brutal very cold person very hardened by life and she by no means was a good mother to Tonya she was actually a pretty terrible mother to her even though Tonya was doing really well on the ice like by age 10 she was considered a prodigy he wouldn't really know that at home she was dealing with a lot of issues it definitely wasn't taking a toll like on her ice skating she was doing all these complex jumps and was just blowing people away with her talent but at home things were rough her parents got divorced when she was only 15 years old and this was really tough on her and when her parents were getting this divorce her mom made it clear to Tonya and her dad that she wanted nothing to do with Tonya she didn't even care about her and pretty much kicked her to the curb was like I don't want her you can keep her and many people including Tonya of course claimed that her mother physically harmed her on many occasions that she was very abused especially when she was younger a lot of moms even talked about seeing her beat Tonya with a hairbrush in the locker room area when they were at ice skating practice she's not a good mother she hits me in CBC one time I spanked her with a hairbrush at a competition her mom was a major alcoholic she would bring liquor literally in thermos to ice skating practice and was constantly drunk and the abuse has kind of been debated between Tonya and her mom but I really believe Tonya Tonya said it was way worse than anyone can possibly understand and at one point Tonya claims that her mom even threw a steak knife at her and it landed in her right arm she also really verbally abused her told her she was worthless all the time Poehler she was ugly that she would never make it in life like just a terrible mom always down on me either hitting me or vocally yelling and screaming but like I said everything was going really well for her in the ice skating world even though her life was just terminal Hill at home I think ice skating was something that she could escape to and somewhere that she could feel like she was accomplishing something and making something out of her life and when she was pretty young she was introduced to her Diane Rawlinson and Tonya really looked up to Diane in a lot of ways and probably more as a motherly figure to her because her mom was so uninvolved the only reason that her mom was even paying the bills for ice skating was because she thought it was like her and Tonya's only possible ticket out of the town she saw the potential she saw maybe she could win and she could do really well financially and that's why she was supporting her tombi cuz she was supporting her daughter's dreams like it was all about her in the end so I think Tonya really connected with Diane because Diane really saw so much potential in Tonya I think she saw someone who was rougher around the edges and had a more difficult road ahead when it comes to figure skating that she really needed someone to guide her in this world where she just did not fit in you're being a little bit too graceful in the beginning okay it needs to be a little bit more upbeat and even a music slow you want it to be jazzy honey has so much exuberance for most escape so much even at three it was really fun to taste and in the mid-80s Tonya first started doing actual figure skating competitions more serious ones she placed six at the 1986 US Figure Skating Championships fifth in 1987 1988 and third in 1989 as she grew up she decided that she definitely wanted to make figure skating her career in her life so she ended up getting her GED and dropping out of high school in 1988 and she was just putting in MADD hours working super hard she was determined to be one of America's best female ice skaters now one thing that would definitely get her to that position is if she was able to complete a triple axel because at the time a triple axel had never been completed in a competition by a female from the United States now Tonya was determined to be the one to do this the triple axel is very very hard to do I'm definitely not an expert on this I'm not a figure skater I'd barely stand up on ice skates so I'm gonna try to explain this the best that I personally can this jump is absolutely insane sure there's more insane ones out there actually pretty sure there is but the triple axel is very hard to do and basically you have to jump off the ground with enough force on your foot facing up your foot has to go forward then you have to jump into the air and spin three times you have to get three spins in that jump and then you have to come down and land on one foot with a ton of pressure because that motion is I mean this is when a physics person would be nice to have around right but that motion is creating more force when she lands it ends up being hundreds of pounds of pressure on one foot after you land a triple axel you're on these little blades like on ice it just blows me away you have to be so talented to do something like this I think it's something you're like born with it's looks so hard but anyway Tonya could do this like she was doing this all the time had their practices back at home and her team felt like she could do it in a competition possibly maybe she could be the first one to actually land this jump in competition being in competition is so different than practicing there's so much less pressure you're not nervous and as an ice skater you have to think about your entire routine and maybe you don't want to put something as risky as a triple axel in there because if you miss then you're just screwed you know so it was like a gamble but her team decided let's have her do it so in 1988 she was only 17 years old and it was her first Olympic tryouts and in practices she was really getting the axial down she was almost able to land it several different times but then she had one moment where she tripped kind of and just kind of knocked her confidence down and unfortunately she did not land it correctly and because of this she ended up not making the Olympic team and you know this wasn't the end of the world for her she's still young but something would happen in her life that really threw her off course big-time and would probably be the biggest downfall she ever had and that is when she got married extremely young to a man named Jeff Gillooly he is a weird guy he's very sketchy cat and he basically picked her up by creeping on her from the side of the ice skating when she was practicing one day and she was only 15 years old at the time and he was the first guy to like pay her any attention and was into her and she really really loved that attention and fell into a relationship with him very quickly and I think this is because she just was floundering in the world and this guy was telling her how pretty she was and he had a car and seemed somewhat stable and took care of her and she liked this and when she was very very young she ended up marrying him her family didn't really like this and after the wedding ceremony and they line up and everybody lines up to shake his hand and kiss Tonya and everything and when I walked up to him I shook his hand I said I still don't like you but welcome to the family so even though things were a little crazy for Tonya and she had just got married really young and this guy is a little sketch I'll explain more they definitely should not have gotten married it threw Tanya's life off big time and she was dealing with the stress from him but he was really pushing her to succeed because he saw the talent in her as well and he put a lot of pressure on her as well to practice a ton to work as hard as she could and she did and that finally paid off for her in 1991 it was the US Championships and everyone was really excited and nervous because Tonya was rumored to be doing the triple axel and if she lands it she would be the first woman in America to be able to do this so they start playing the music she skates out and the time comes for the jump and you can see her gearing up getting that power and that's one thing about Tonya is she was built differently from a lot of the other female ice skaters you know a lot of them are very slender and dainty and Tonya had really thick powerful thighs and legs and she definitely was a force to be reckoned with so she goes into the jump leaves on that first foot spins three times and lands it perfectly the first American to attempt and complete a triple axel jump we will know that here whether she tries it or not [Music] and her face at this moment is just priceless she looks so overjoyed this was a big moment for her this was a huge goal that she wanted to complete and I think this was probably the best moment of Tonya Harding's entire life you can just see the joy all over her face and that was like the best feeling I could ever have I was so excited I mean I had here's something down my face and everything I I was crying because I was so happy that I actually did it a few months later in March of 1991 they were at the World Championships and she completed the triple axel again she ended up getting second place behind Kristi Yamaguchi and in front of Nancy Kerrigan now who is Nancy Kerrigan well she was very much the opposite of Tonya she had a pretty normal upbringing her family had more money she was very beautiful and had the classic figure skater body she was around the same age as Tonya and it was one of Tanya's biggest competitors and biggest challenges she was someone who was really successful and a lot of people thought she was the one who could really beat Tonya Harding because Tonya was on the fast road to success now even though they were major competitors Tonya claims that her Nancy were friends and she never thought anything bad about her but to this day that's really not known there's a lot of people out there that said they were like fighting that they were enemies that they didn't get along very well but according to Tonya they were friends so who really knows so in 1992 Tonya was training for the Olympics that would be held in Albertville France but during one of her practices she had actually landed wrong and broke one of her skates and she was kind of thrown off four days after this and her coaches were starting to feel like maybe we shouldn't even have her attempt this jump because if she does it and she misses it's going to really significantly impact her scoring and this is the Olympics it's a really big deal they were very nervous about her being able to make this and they wanted her routine to at least be clean if she couldn't make the axel they thought maybe was better to take it out but Tonya decided to go for the jump anyway and fortunately she did not land it correctly [Music] and it ended up getting her fourth place in the Olympics which was a major bummer for her Tania was heartbroken but this didn't stop her from wanting to show everyone that she was the best and she would actually have a second chance a lot sooner I mean when the Olympics you normally have to wait every four years but this was the time that the Olympics made the split into summer and winter and so is this one weird time where the Olympics were in 1992 and 1994 for winter Tania knew that she wanted to redeem herself in the 1994 Olympics and went into full serious training mode I mean she'd been having so much chaos in her personal life between her husband and her family that she felt like she wasn't giving it her full attention that she could've and that's why she wasn't able to land the triple axel in the first Olympics so this time was her chance but during this time her and Jeff's relationship was incredibly rocky Tania said that Jeff was very abusive to her and extremely controlling of everything she did he would prevent her from going anywhere without his permission he was constantly over her like almost bothering her in a very abusive way he would threaten to harm her or to harm himself in front of her and that takes a terrible mental toll on you there was a timer he even fired a gun in her presence to threaten her to scare her and he was just terrible to her which Tania was sadly used to because she had been being abused her whole life drugged me all the way in to my apartment with a gun pointed at me he beat me all the time didn't matter any time he said he loved me so I stayed with him my mom said she loved me but she beat me so I figured you know well I guess it's okay you know I mean maybe one of these days he'll grow out of it maybe he'll become proud of me so she ended up separating from him in 1993 no this is so crazy but when the United States Figure Skating Association found out that tani was wanting to get a divorce from Jeff they decided to convince her otherwise they believed it made her look really bad you know divorce doesn't look good on a woman and the image when it comes to figure skating and the pressure on these women to be perfect and men I'm sure is insane I mean for the United States Figure Skating Association to get involved in this personal drama between her and her husband is so weird for them to convince her not to do it they said that it would hurt her image and alter the outcome of the games now Tonya says now that she thought at the time that this was just a load of BS but she's decided that nothing was more important to her than winning the Olympics and if they really thought that this was going to affect her chances of winning she was gonna go ahead and just be with Jeff so she stayed with him anyways but the rumors were definitely going around with the public and other ice skaters that the relationship was rocky and that this was just a faked thing a facade to help her image so now let's talk about that moment I showed at the beginning of the video so it was January 6 1994 it was one day before the US Figure Skating championship first lady's singles competition and Nancy Kerrigan was walking around the area of the ice skating rink getting ready to perform so they had like practice sessions leading up to actual competition and Nancy had just finished up at the practice session and was getting off the ice and walking to probably change out of her outfit Nancy was walking behind this like curtain thing so no one else saw this actually and this is when a strange man came up to her with a baton and smashed her in the leg right above her right knee Nancy started screaming immediately and tons of people rushed to her side [Music] [Music] and you can tell in those moments that Nancy knew that this was going to affect her ice skating career no tanya was actually sleeping when all of this happened and someone came and told her that Nancy Kerrigan's been struck in the leg and they were actually really worried that someone was out like attacking ice skaters or she had no idea what it was so she was nervous she was nervous for her own safety and the other ice skaters she said but she went out there and competed and she did great and Nancy actually was unable to compete a doctor looked at her leg and said there was no way that she could land and whoever did this purposely did her right leg because that's the most crucial landing leg and there was just no way that she could perform so Tonya ended up winning the US title and a lot of people thought you know if Nancy wasn't taken out of the competition would Tonya have actually won but after this her and Nancy were selected for the US 1994 Olympic team but after the competition happened there was just so much drama there was so much chaos in the ice skating community and I was just around the world people were really interested in this because why would someone do this to someone else it seems like it would have to be someone who didn't want her to compete and who would that person be and many people were quickly coming to the conclusion of maybe it was Tonya could she have something to do with this so for the first couple days in the media there was a lot of confusion no one really knew who was responsible for these attacks and people were just concerned and there was a lot of rumors about Tonya however on January 14th a man named Shane stant turned himself into the Phoenix FBI and it turned out that Shane and his uncle Derrick Smith were actually hired by Jeff Gillooly and someone who claimed to be Tonya's bodyguard Shaun Eckhart apparently they wanted Shane and his uncle Derrick to attack Nancy so that she wouldn't be able to compete raising the chances for Tonya to win so Shane Derrick and Shaun were all arrested but people immediately started wondering if Tonya had something to do with this did Jeff care enough to do this on his own or did Tanja encourage him to make this move because she was stressed out about possibly losing to Nancy the thing about Tanja is she will do anything to win and that is what's really known about her she was extremely competitive and people thought maybe she would actually go this far of course Tanja totally denies this and she does to this day but opinions are all over the place and I'd love to know what you think but once word got out about this whole plot this whole thing started getting a ton more attention and the media went absolutely crazy with it there was a lot of talk about whether there would be any accountability for Tanja would she be pulled off the Olympic team for this would they somehow be able to prove that she was involved there was so much media covering this people were literally camping outside of her house hiding behind her car everyone was in on the latest drama between Nancy and Tonya it got to the point where Tanja couldn't go anywhere to do anything without a camera crew following her and people were really torn in the public on whether or not Tonya would go to this extreme in order to win this was a massive scandal for Olympics and the country hadn't really seen anything like this before at least four females in ice skating but despite the scandal it was announced that Tonya still would be competing in the games she made a public apology and that kind of had mixed reviews I mean people are very mixed when it comes to Tana either people love her and they're on her side or they really think that she's this major liar and this fraud and that she did have something to do with this but they went ahead and did an investigation to see if they could figure out what really happened on January 18th 1994 and Tonya volunteered to questioning by the district attorney and FBI she was interviewed for over ten hours and her full FBI transcript was released by the press on February 1st and it was reported in the transcript that Tonya had it changed her story during this interview she had first spent hours trying to convince them that she had absolutely no involvement and didn't know about this at all but at some point the FBI told her whether they did or not that they knew that she was and that's when she finally admitted that Jeff really did plan this and that he was involved she said quote I hope everyone understands I'm telling on someone I really care about I know now Jeff is involved I'm sorry then on January 19th Jeff surrendered to the FBI but after all this even after she apologized to Nancy and stuff she still claimed in interviews that she really didn't know anything about it she just found out after that Jeff was involved but she was not involved in the actual planning but they really believed Tonya that she had no involvement in it herself that she was not the one who orchestrated this and they really focused in on Jeff to this day we don't really know if Tonya was involved you know people are kind of all over the place with it so you'll definitely have to let me know what you think but Jeff was the one who was held responsible for it Jeff's attorney negotiated a plea bargain in exchange for testimony regarding all involved parties involved in the attack that following July he was sentenced to two years in prison Jeff and Sean also both pleaded guilty to racketeering and Shane and Derrick pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit a second-degree assault eventually Tonya did admit that she did kind of know about everything afterwards and she didn't report it as soon as she should she found out things after it happened I would like to begin by saying how sorry I am about what happened to Nancy Kerrigan I had no prior knowledge of the planned assault I am responsible however we're failing to report things I learned about the assault when I returned home from nationals but she still says there's no way that I was involved in the planning like I didn't know it was gonna happen before it happened but on February 5th of 1994 the US Figure Skating Association stated that they had reason to believe that Tonya had violated the sports code of ethics and this was mainly because she had failed to report an assault and she had sworn that she did not know what was going on originally so she was formally charged with making false statements about her knowledge and the panel also recommended that she have a disciplinary hearing but by the time the 1994 Olympics came around Nancy Kerrigan had made a full recovery and was ready to compete against Tonya and during her first few performances tanya was not doing well I think there was so much pressure on her was all about Nancy versus Tanya this big feud the Olympics had a really high watch rating because people were so into the feud between them but Tanya was not performing well during one of her routines one of her shoelaces broke and there's this famous picture of her putting her leg up showing them the judges why she couldn't skate and she looks so upset she was completely devastated and they did let her do a Rescate so she was able to like repeat this with a fixed skate but it didn't help she still did not perform well and she was not able to pull off a winning performance [Music] whatever skater has a problem whether it's a costume or a hook or a lace they have to go right to the referee report the problem and then the referee makes a ruling but interestingly enough it didn't end up being Tonya or Nancy that one it ended up being a skater from the Ukraine instead Nancy got a silver medal but Tonya ended up getting 8th place and she was really devastated but meanwhile the panel is doing their own investigation back at home and they were examining a lot of different evidence including the testimonies of Shane and Derrick and Tonya and Jeff's phone records and they also found these handwritten notes in a Portland restaurant trash bin on January 30th that apparently raised a lot of suspicion they were able to track their credit cards and see that they purchased rental cars and stayed at hotels nearby where the attack happened so after that investigation concluded on March 16 1994 Tonya ended up pleading guilty to conspiracy to hinder prosecution as a class C felony offense Tonya was really upset and heard her lawyers work to get her a plea bargain and at one point she was looking at five years in prison over this but instead she ended up getting three years of probation a 100 thousand dollar fine which was a ton for her and 500 hours of community service which is crazy now they still haven't been able to 100% prove that Tonya was involved they've pretty much connected the dots and a lot of people really think that she is guilty that she was involved but there's a lot of people out there who think that she was framed and the ice skating Association just wanted to take her down so as a result of this Tonya ended up losing her 1994 US Championship title and this is crazy but she was banned from figure skating for the rest of her life I mean at least for the US Figure Skating Association and this was just devastating to Tonya I mean I don't think she could believe that this was happening to her personally I think this is really unfair there have been way worse things that have been done in sports that have been let go especially for men it's interesting how hard they came down on a woman without being able to prove that she actually had involvement or knowledge you know it sounds like she knew to some extent or she knew at some point and just didn't tell people you never get the full story with her but I do not think Tonya Harding was the one who came up with the plan and planned it out and executed it so to take the only sport that she had poured everything into her true passion away from her is just so awful to be honest on February 5th 1998 Tonya and Nancy agreed to be interviewed together for the first time since the incident when she was four years prior at this point Nancy I want to apologize and for being in the wrong place at the wrong time I say that from the bottom of my heart I really do things went pretty crazy for Tonya after all of this happened to her on February 15th of 1994 a videotape clip of Tonya topless was leaked the New York Post reported that Jeff had given them the videotape for an undisclosed sum of money so he was just a terrible person like he pretty much derailed her whole life then on July 26 1990 for a magazine known as penthouse it ended up publishing some pictures from that tape and this article also included pictures of Tonya and Jeff doing it sorry YouTube's really rough to say anything on these days but they were paid for this they each negotiated a deal for it totally weird though she was clearly spiraling losing ice skating was terrible for her she was trying to figure out what she was gonna do next now that she couldn't do ice skating where's her life gonna go what is she gonna do how's she gonna take care of herself and since there was so much publicity over this there were a decent amount of people interested in her because the name Tonya Harding became a household name in 1994 Tonya was cast for a small action film called breakaway and the film was released in 1996 but didn't do so well she appeared on various TV shows like commenting on stuff such as world's dumbest criminals she did end up getting remarried to her second husband who was named Michael Smith but only a year after they got married in 1995 they got divorced in 1996 as well so just rough for her for a while eventually she got in to boxing celebrity boxing she was actually featured on a show called celebrity boxing and in 2002 she boxed against Paula Jones on the Fox Network celebrity boxing show and she ended up winning the fight and this was a big moment on TV cuz she absolutely went after her and Tonya really is like okay I'm kind of good in this and it makes me feel good to get my aggression out so she went into boxing for a little while on February 22nd 2003 as she made her debut as a professional women's boxer but there were rumors and Tanya pretty much confirmed this that she did it because she really needed money and this was an easy way to get that and she wanted to do something physical with her career she just didn't really care what now her boxing career was actually cut short because she had asthma and for a lot of her life tanya was actually a chain smoker so chain smoking and asthma just doesn't go well together so her very short-lived boxing career ended with three wins and three losses in April of 2018 Tanya competed on season 26 of Dancing with the Stars and she finished in third place overall on June 23rd 2010 tanya married a man named joseph price who she met at a local restaurant when she was 39 and in 2011 she had her son who's named Gordon it's her only son she has done so many different jobs and things over her life she has also worked as a welder a painter at a metal fabrication company and she even spent some time as a hardware salesperson for Sears and her latest job as of 2017 she announced that she was currently working as a painter and deck builder so her life is pretty all over the place she currently lives in Vancouver Washington and her most recent appearance was on The Ellen DeGeneres Show she stated that she was still active with ice skating and practices three times a week she still loves the sport in more recent interviews she's admitted that yes she was aware that this was kind of a plan but she never agreed to it and that's where the story kind of stops Nancy Kerrigan also went off and did some things in her life she was on Dancing with the Stars as well I'm not sure what it's like between them now I'd be interesting to see them do an interview nowadays especially after the movie and everything came out I think this story is so interesting I think it's very strange the way they came down so hard on Tanya I feel like it was kind of extreme but a lot of people think that she absolutely deserved it and that she really was super involved but I really want to know your opinions so let me know in the comments down below but that's it for me today guys I hope you have a great holiday season thank you guys for supporting my channel make sure to give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it and don't forget to subscribe do I ever say that I never say that it's so bad I'm supposed to say that as a youtuber please subscribe if you're not already but that's it for me guys I hope you're having a great day now see [Music]

Channel: Kendall Rae

Views: 1,476,089

Rating: 4.9484873 out of 5

Keywords: kendallraeonyt, kendallrae, kendall rae, mile higher, mile higher podcast, nancy kerrigan, i tonya, figure skating, margot robbie, inside edition, olympics, ice skating, tonya, harding, skating, tonya harding, true crime, mystery, 1994 winter olympics, society, mysteries, unsolved mysteries, culture, dateline, crime, tech, space, science, unexplained, paranormal, investigation, documentary, inside_edition, rt, news, mile higher life, dateline mystery, abc news

Id: ak4cMERxiKI

Length: 34min 51sec (2091 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 23 2019