With Blades Drawn

By Martha Duffy

All the elements will be in place -- the spotlights, the swelling waltzes and jazz tunes, the sequined sprites taking to the air. The glamour event of the Winter Olympics, the women's figure-skating competition, always the grand finale, has proved the durable stuff of fantasy. Thousands of little girls would like to catch the sparkle from those glittering beads and waft away to the Olympics too. Their elders say simply that they like to watch the sport because it looks both artful and effortless, like flight.

But this year all that gauze and grace will not conceal the fact that skating has been marred by the spectacle -- part crime show, part soap opera -- of Tonya Harding, her spooky husband and seedy associates all blaming one another for last month's attack on her rival Nancy Kerrigan. Harding is determined to skate -- and by braving the court with her case has made sure that the U.S. team remains Harding and Kerrigan. Now, sports officials are looking for ways to have the star-crossed duo practice separately until the women's figure-skating competition begins next week. Otherwise, the efforts of other athletes competing in more decorous endeavors will be overshadowed as the public and the media hunger for a catfight. Notwithstanding the blades on ice, the skate-off will be much more polite. Nevertheless, for the skating community, the mess underscored the fact that the sport is no longer a sheltered world of quaint skills. It is far, far from the old days when folk traced patterns on the dark ice of country ponds and competition was a genteel affair involving ladies and gentlemen.

Harding is at the center of this are-you-ready-to-rumble transformation of the sport. "I've been skating 20 years for a gold medal," she told TIME last week. "And I'm not going to give up until I get one." Her lawyers plowed right into the legal obstacles that precede the Feb. 23 competition. Last week the U.S.O.C. called a hearing in Norway on Feb. 15 requiring Harding to respond to charges that she not only failed to live up to the Olympic code of conduct but participated in the crime or failed to report her knowledge of it. The result could have led to her expulsion from the Games. Harding struck back by asking for a temporary restraining order -- and filing a $25 million lawsuit. On Friday a circuit-court judge in Oregon gave both sides the weekend to try to sort things out. On Saturday, the U.S.O.C., visibly perturbed by its foray into the legal system, said it would cancel its disciplinary hearing in exchange for Harding's dropping her lawsuit. The judge affirmed both the skater's "right to a fair and impartial hearing" and the U.S.O.C.'s "right and obligation to oversee and discipline" Olympic athletes.

Harding's dream is that "the gold" will transform her life, which, as she underscores in the media, has been a hardscrabble road. Allegedly her on-again off-again husband Jeff Gillooly shared her vision. According to Gillooly, when Harding interpreted disappointing scores in a Japan competition last December as a sign that she might be frozen out of the Olympic Games (in fact she flubbed a crucial combination), Gillooly fell into a discussion of sporting politics with his old friend Shawn Eckardt, who ran something called World Bodyguard Services from his parents' Portland, Oregon, home. Eckardt recruited two associates to right matters by maiming Nancy Kerrigan, the favorite to win the U.S. National Championships -- the event that determines who goes to Norway.

It was not a dream team. According to Gillooly's statement to the FBI, Harding was worried early on that Eckardt could possibly pull off the attack. The plotters' schemes would seem almost ludicrous if it weren't for their viciousness. A scenario that called for running Kerrigan's car off the road was rejected because the team was afraid that their own "beater car" might be disabled and strand them at the scene of the crime. The hitman, Shane Stant, roamed Cape Cod in a vain attempt to find his quarry. She wasn't there, though Gillooly claims that Harding herself made phone calls to get the times of Kerrigan's practices. When Stant finally scored in Detroit, Eckardt boasted to Gillooly that Stant had hit Kerrigan six times over her body, including once in the head. Fortunately, he landed only one blow to the knee, slightly off-target.

Is Gillooly credible? In a TIME-CNN poll taken last week, 54% of respondents found his tales more believable than Harding's (26% supported her). Meanwhile, even as the national champion took her case to network and tabloid television last week, only 38% thought she should remain on the team; 52% said she should be expelled. Still, when asked whether Olympic athletes should be held to higher standards than ordinary citizens, 64% said the same rules should prevail. On Saturday, Harding was presumed Olympic until proved guilty.

Harding has much at stake. Especially for women, figure skating is a big- money sport. Harding has said that when she skates, she often sees dollar signs. After a ragged childhood (her mother has married seven times, her father left home in 1985), she yearns for the limousine life. Hardship, she told TIME, "made me know the reality of money, that you might have some one day, and the next day it could all be gone." It's hard to know whether any of her dreams will survive when the headlines and lawsuits have faded, though plans to film her life story are already in the works. As for her nemesis, even before the notoriety she recoils from, Kerrigan was the most sought-after skater in some years for endorsements, shows and franchises.

Too bad for Tonya. For all her street smarts, she seems not to have grasped a basic truth: life is not fair. Compare these rivals. Both women come from working-class backgrounds. Harding is a powerful skater with a mighty jump. Just as impressive to a connoisseur is the forceful way she strokes along -- almost into -- the ice. It's sheer, thrilling athleticism. But Harding's body is not ideal; she has thick thighs and forearms. Also, she is not musical. Kerrigan is -- and a good deal else. She is a good jumper when not plagued by nerves. Her balance of skills is the strongest among women skaters, and she performs with an undulating, pleasing lyricism. To complete the picture, she is lovely to look at, with a lean musculature, sculpted features.

Kerrigan's comeback was done in grand style at a Boston charity benefit, televised by CBS on Feb. 5, called Nancy Kerrigan & Friends. Her program looked clean and vigorous, though her spins still lack impetus. Until then, her recovery was conducted in secrecy. The rink in South Dennis, Massachusetts, where she works, was guarded right up to the roof. But even before the show aired, her coaches, Evy and Mary Scotvold, were ebullient. Kerrigan wanted to hit the ice jumping. But Evy insisted on caution because of scar tissue: "We've had to push it, but we couldn't push it to the point of reinjury because then you're through." So there were sessions of swimming and weight lifting. And the bike. "I have to use the bike to loosen up, and I hate it," says Kerrigan, 24. The day she first pulled off a triple toe loop, says Mary with a sigh, "was . . . just . . . wonderful." The rest of the triples and spins followed, and there will be no changes in her program.

This is Kerrigan's second comeback since her 1992 bronze. The first occurred after her disastrous fifth-place finish in March during the World Championship in Prague -- an event she was favored to win. Not strong enough in her long program, she scaled back jumps and faltered. As the medal ceremony took place, she cried out on TV, "I should be out there!"

Prague changed her life. Starting last July, she dramatically escalated her training, doing double and even triple run-throughs of her long program, a feat that requires formidable energy. Now, says Evy Scotvold, "she's very, very determined. She's got a mission in life; she's absolutely certain she's going to get that gold."

Her longtime, supportive pal, 1992 Olympic silver medalist Paul Wylie, agrees: "It helps that she knows the whole country is behind her." She has only to enter her family's home in Stoneham, Massachusetts, for reassurance. The dining room is filled with tubs of unopened mail. Her close family has always been her mainstay, the lump of gold Harding never had. But the struggle to vault their daughter to the top has been tough on the Kerrigans; father Dan is a welder, mother Brenda is legally blind. When Nancy began lessons, the family thought she might follow the path of her young coach, Theresa Martin, who was putting herself through college by teaching kids.

When Martin urged more intensive training, it took the family three weeks to decide if they could swing it. Mark, one of Nancy's two older brothers, acknowledges that "things were a little lopsided. But when it came right down to it, and they asked us, Do you want her to quit? we always said no." They still feel that way. After the assault, both brothers moved into Nancy's condo in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where she lives during the week.

Outside home, Nancy had to make sacrifices. Like any kid who gets special treatment -- arriving at school late and departing early -- she found herself cut off from friendships. For a period in her teens, she trained at the Skating Club of Boston, where there was a wealthy membership and social patina unknown to her. "Sometimes it seemed like they thought they were better than others," she recalls. "And I'd say, like why? We're good people. We're good skaters." A gutsy response, but Nancy hardly understood that some of the snobbery was a cover for envy -- which was to cast a deeper shadow later in life.

The family is still dazed by this goddess of motion in their midst. The clan was 14 strong at her first national outing (novice division) in Kansas City, Missouri. At least two dozen will make their way to Lillehammer. But even now, when the money from Campbell's Soup and Reebok is starting to flow, the Kerrigans still pitch in, ironing their daughter's fancy dresses: Brenda, barely able to see, wields the iron, Dan guides her on where to place it.

So the safety net to catch Kerrigan's fall in Detroit was this proud family. But how does anyone cope with the anger generated by a vicious attack? The Scotvolds say simply that she doesn't brood: "She doesn't have time to dwell on what's happened. Maybe after the Olympics are over." Wylie adds that she may be dissociating herself from the blow to protect her concentration. Kerrigan is, as usual, circumspect. "It's hard to know what to feel right now," she says. Admitting to watching the developments on TV, she quips that it is all a form of mystery, "and I like mysteries."

For the Olympics, she will have a few more tricks in her bag. Working with a sports psychologist, she learned that she built up excess nervous energy before a performance. Now she will run up and down the corridor to get some release. She also discovered the relaxing value of comedy tapes. Her favorites are telephone scams by a couple of New York City radio disk jockeys. Says Kerrigan: "They just call up people and harass them. It lightens up the whole atmosphere."

Tonya has her own stress-reduction regimen. "What I do is I basically try to 'tree' it," she told TIME. "My ((sports)) psychologist taught me that. You touch a tree, and you leave your problems there. I get to the rink, and I touch a door so I can leave my problems right there. Most of the time it's been working."

If figure skating did not have a bang-up tabloid scandal on its hands, Lillehammer would still provide plenty of drama. The truth is that there is no dominant female skater in contention. One reason may be that rule changes have altered the system that produced a steady flow of champions: Albright, Heiss, Fleming, Hamill, Witt. Those women earned their way partly through skill at school figures, now eliminated. Then there are the triple jumps, much tougher on women than men. Says veteran judge Bonnie McLauthlin: "This sport is now so tough on women that you won't see many great performances."

If a favorite can be named, it is neither Kerrigan nor Harding but four-time European champion Surya Bonaly, 20, of France. An intrepid dynamo, she has long relied on jumps and the sheer wacky originality of her program. The crowd loves it, but she loses points with the skating establishment, which considers her a mere gymnast on blades. Lately she has smoothed out her brisk but choppy style. Tireless in training, she skates all day until the Zamboni ice machines start closing in, and even then she may toss off a backflip or somersault, just to show who really runs this rink.

In the European Championships last month, Bonaly bested the reigning world champ, Oksana Baiul, 16, the orphaned waif from Odessa who lives with and swears by her coach, Galina Zmievskaya. Nancy Kerrigan, a generous judge of her opponents, likens Baiul to "a little deer out there." But this is a saucy, sexy fawn who likes to caress her hips and wiggle her nonexistent behind. She can also show real emotion without appearing bratty, grinning broadly after a successful move or sobbing with pleasure when high marks go up. In the past few months she has been beset by growing pains (she gained 2 in.) and perhaps the overwhelming blast of publicity that followed her long- shot triumph in Prague last March. In the Europeans she failed to complete a single triple-jump combination, and her overall program was slow. But if she can regain stability, she could take it all.

Odessa may be remote from skating centers, but the true outsider is Chen Lu, 17 (known to all as LuLu), from the province of Jilin in northeast China, who earned the bronze medal at the past two World Championships. Her father, a former member of the national hockey team, taught her to skate. Her coach, Li Mingzhu, learned his techniques by watching videos. To complete this magical mystery resume, she already has a contract with Danskin. Says her U.S. + representative, Yuki Saegusa: "She's had to do everything on her own, even choreography." However sui generis, Chen skates with a rare authority, one slender creature who can fill a whole rink.

As the athletes go through the crucial on-scene practices, the skating debacle has contorted the entire event. Kerrigan, never really poised, arrived to confront a solid wall of press. Asked of her feelings toward her rival last week, Kerrigan said, "I think it's personal, and between the two of us and not you guys." When she chatted with her coaches and doctor at rinkside, someone lowered a boom mike to pick up the conversation. "Can they do that?" she asked. Says Evy Scotvold: "She just can't get any space. She's never had this kind of impact." Now that Harding is Norway-bound, the frenzy will be greater. Both American contestants face a battle for focus. And in this situation, there is no court where Harding can sue.

If anything should have persuaded sports authorities to confront their unprecedented dilemma earlier, it is the effect on other competitors. Most are well known and would like a little press attention that the folks back home could share in. They are almost completely ignored. Kurt Browning, a Canadian contender for the men's title, would normally be surrounded by reporters, but he only gets asked about Harding/Kerrigan. Says he: "It's not about figure skating anymore."

U.S. pairs skater Karen Courtland has figured out her personal way of coping with the mess. "I'm going to be cheering for all the Americans," she vowed, "whoever my teammates are." It's not quite the Olympic ideal, but these are not ideal Olympics.

With reporting by Jaime A. FlorCruz/Beijing, Susanna Schrobsdorff/ Lillehammer , Janice C. Simpson/Stoneham and James Willwerth/Portland