Tonya Harding (USA) - 1993 Skate America, Figure Skating, Ladies' Free Skate

Though the past few years have been troubled once for Tanya, she remembers a day at the 91 Nationals when she became the first and only American woman to hit a triple axel in competition. She's watched that performance thousands of times, but Tanya's a perfectionist and still feels she can do better. Well, the takeoff was a little bit sideways, and it should have been straight. The lift on it was perfect, but my legs in the air were a little bit too open. My arms were a little too open. They weren't close to my body. And that's what made the checkout a little bit wild. But, yeah, I did it. So it really doesn't matter, you know. Can I feel like that again? Oh, yeah. I know I can do it again. It'll hit at the right time. Since then, turbulence in Tanya's personal life has affected her on-ice performance. The media has not given Tanya an easy ride for the decisions she has made. A lot of people misunderstand a lot of things that I do. There's a lot of people who say, oh, she's not training, she's not doing this, she's not doing that. Well, wait a minute, how would you know? You don't even live in our state. They don't know my life. They don't know what I do. I just tend to, you know, want to prove everybody wrong. And so I always, that's how, I guess that's my strategy is to prove everybody wrong. Not sure what you're going to get. Last night, what we got was spectacular. Can she sustain it for four minutes tonight? That is the question on everyone's mind. She's a very unpredictable skater, but she exudes such great power. She's not going to be doing her triple axel in this program. She's playing it safe, or maybe she's trying to just take the pressure off of herself. Her opening triple jump is a triple lutz. Here's her long preparation. She fell out of that landing. This is her second triple, triple toe. Nice height. She missed being on the world team last year. She was fourth at the nationals. So all of these competitions leading up to the Olympics in February are very important to her, to show everyone she has her act together this time. Jurassic Park. As though she's running out of a little steam. Well, she does have a condition of asthma, and that affects her breathing. Like she had something wrong with her skate. She was tying it in the warm-up. There appears to be something wrong with her skate. This is like deja vu of the nationals last year when her dress came unhooked. Can I tighten it? Yes, you can come back at the very end. From where I took off at? Two minutes. So Dick, what happens in this situation? When does she finish her program? Well, whenever there's a failure of equipment, the skater has two choices. They can pick up and continue from where they left off, provided they do that right now, or they wait till the end of all the skaters and reskate the entire program. It's their choice. She obviously asked to move right away. They've given her that opportunity after tightening her skate. But this definitely has given her a chance to rest. This can either be an advantage because it gives her more energy for the end of her program, but it has disrupted her rhythm. So she'll pick up 2.53 into her program. They're giving her 15 seconds of run-up to find her place in the music, and she has approximately one minute remaining. The last section of her program, where she's going to do a double axel, triple salchow. You can see she's very upset on her face. Double salchow. Very nice speed on all these combination spin moves. This is certainly opening the door for Surya Bonali. Oh, dear. We said she was going to be unpredictable, but this was beyond expectations. Totally unforeseen. She seems so disappointed. The point is, something always seems to happen to Tanya. On the one hand, she's so strong and powerful, and on the other hand, she seems fragile and emotionally vulnerable. But one thing is clear, she's never boring. Well, the audience and her coach, Diane Rawlinson, are showing their affections for her. Let's take a closer look at the double axel, which she fell. Watch her edge swings off and start to rotation before she even takes off. And the marks for technical merit range from a low of 5.0 to a high of 5.7. Well, you know, those are very low for a young lady who refuses to settle for anything less than an Olympic gold medal. I guess Tanya has to sort of get back on track. She's even going to make a berth on the Olympic team. Remember, only two will go. And the marks for artistic impression range from a low of 4.8 to a high of 5.6. And I think the disruption of her skate problems made the judging very difficult. It also made her program very disjointed. Surya Bonaly will skate next, last year's European champion and second at the Worlds. The gold is hers to take if she can put it all together.