Tonya Harding has yet to complete a run-through of either competitive program at a practice here. She winces occasionally when jump landings send shock waves through her sprained ankle.
Such problems have raised questions about whether Harding can skate effectively-or at all-in the Olympic women’s event beginning Wednesday. By late Saturday, after she had had a couple of disastrous practices marked by a failure to complete any jumps, those questions had been transformed into serious doubts.
Harding, ever the chimera, delivered the best response she could with strong skating in two Sunday practices.
While she did only pieces of her 2-minute, 40-second technical program and 4-minute free skate, Harding had clearly regained command of her jumps. Rival Nancy Kerrigan, who shares Harding’s practice group, even clapped at the end of her bitter rival’s technical program run-through.
When she left the ice at the end of the latter practice, Harding had completed four straight triple Axel jumps, although none were within program run-throughs. She is the only woman in the Olympic field to have landed that 3 1/2-revolution jump in a competition.
In the first practice alone, Harding had clean landings on all six varieties of triple jumps. No competitor can do all six.
The ankle? “It’s all right. It’s better,” Harding said.
There now seems little doubt Harding’s name will be submitted, as planned, in the draw Monday for starting positions in Wednesday’s technical program.
Fears that she might try to skate the technical program and then drop out seemed to be allayed by Harding’s having final fittings on a new skating dress for the Friday free skate.
Harding’s previous dress caused controversy at the U.S. championships because it revealed too much of her chest.
Of course, that little flap was overlooked, given the other event at the national meet that would begin to batter Harding’s image a few days after she won the U.S. title. That was the Jan. 6 assault on Kerrigan.
The U.S. Figure Skating Association told Harding to get some new duds for the Olympics and then found a designer, Karen Mortenson of Colorado Springs.
“I advised Tonya we needed something more Olympic,” U.S. team leader Gale Tanger said.
Her new dress, a burgundy number with short sleeves and rhinestone drops, is considerably more modest, although that seems beside the point now that her breasts were exposed last week in British tabloids.
Kerrigan may need some refitting of her dresses, given that she continues to lose weight. Her coach, Evy Scotvold, said Kerrigan is down to between 108 and 110 pounds, at least 10 pounds lighter than she was while stumbling to a fifth-place finish at the 1993 world championships.
“It makes you quicker and gives you more endurance,” Scotvold said.
Kerrigan nevertheless has been struggling in her free skate run-throughs, but that doesn’t seem to bother Scotvold. He told Kerrigan last week to hold back a little in practice so she wouldn’t need to feel every day had to be perfect.
