Tonya Harding’s skating costume from Nancy Kerrigan attack up for auction
The Olympics are approaching, and one lucky fan could be watching them in historical style.
Tonya Harding’s outfit from the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating World Championship — a day after she orchestrated the infamous attack on Nancy Kerrigan — is up for auction by Lelands.
The starting bid for the red sequined costume — which “lacks a size or manufacturer tag, and is missing a small handful of beads around the neck,” per Lelands — was also worn at the Lillehammer Games weeks later in ’94, was $3,000, having since been upped to $3,300 as of Tuesday afternoon, with the auction going through June 29.
Harding was allegedly at the center of a conspiracy involving her husband, Jeff Gillooly, in which Shane Stant took a collapsible baton to Kerrigan’s knee during the early January competition, which forced her to withdraw and paved the way for Harding to win gold two days later.
“The ultimate goal was so that she wouldn’t skate at the Nationals,” Stant, a close friend of Gillooly’s, told “Inside Edition” in 2018. “There was initial talk of like, cutting her Achilles tendon, which obviously would cripple her. I didn’t think it was necessary. I wasn’t willing to do that on top of that.”
Both went on to the Olympics, with Kerrigan winning silver and Harding finishing 10th.
A month later, Harding pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hinder prosecution in regards to the attack and was stripped of her title and banned from the sport for life.
The story of the attack — from Harding’s perspective — adapted for the big screen in 2018’s “I, Tonya,” starring Margot Robbie as the former Olympian.
The portrayal of Harding as a victim abused by her mother and Gillooly didn’t sit well with Kerrigan.
“I was the victim. Like, that’s my role in this whole thing. That’s it,” she told the Boston Globe in 2018. “At this point, it’s so much easier and better to just be … it’s not really part of my life.”
Harding attempted to extend her 15 minutes of fame as an actress, auto racer, reality show star, celebrity boxer and wrestler in the years since.
