WTA Finals Cancun

Since that older WTA article is now closed for comments, moving this over here: 😉

Seles of course was an extrovert but she said it was very hard to have any real friends in pro tennis, as everyone was in competition. So she was not very social or close with players. Hingis was the first one who was very social with other players in the locker room but also she didn’t have any close true friends.

Yeah, a while back, figure skater Jenny Kirk wrote a perceptive blog post about this whole issue:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130511020801/http://trueslant.com/jenniferkirk/2009/07/20/why-skaters-arent-friends/

Here’s an excerpt:

Skaters who directly compete against one another will never be in an alliance and they will never be close friends. When there are two equally strong competitors who are working towards the same prize, an alliance is the farthest thing from their minds.

Scoop, yes, it was terrible. But did you ever see the movie I, Tonya? Tonya was raised by a monster of a mother, and she ended up dropping out of high school in tenth grade, I think. Her mother was an abusive alcoholic who got divorced six times. 😳 She also had other kids, who she apparently abandoned. I believe Tonya’s sister ended up running away from home and becoming a prostitute or something.

Anyway, Tonya fell for Jeff Gillooly, a violent, abusive man. And he was the one who proposed the plan to do a hit on Nancy. Tonya was slow to agree to it, because she didn’t think they could pull it off. It seems that Tonya was an accomplice, but not an active participant, in the plot.

While I don’t condone Tonya being part of the plan (and lying about it), it would’ve never happened if she hadn’t gotten involved with a group of criminals, who ended up ruining her career. It’s just a sad story all around. 😢

Sam, No I didn’t see that Tonya Harding film and knowing how fake the media and hollywood/entertainment are, I’d estimate their story is about half true if that.

Well, there’s only so much they could embellish about the main parts of the story. Her mother was an abusive drunk, and her husband was an abusive thug. And both used her for their own selfish agendas.

Of course Harding is going to embellish the story to protect her image and rep, or what was left of it.

In spite of her rough past, I actually find Tonya more likable than, say, Nancy Kerrigan. 😏 Like Djokovic, she was an outsider in the skating establishment, and greatly misunderstood. She actually should’ve probably won the bronze medal (instead of Kerrigan) at the Albertville Olympics.

And you probably know that she made a foray into boxing about 20 years ago. 😄 But she was never as good at boxing as she was at skating.

Okay, Scoop, I see you don’t know much about Tonya’s history. 😊

Apparently Tonya’s parents took her to a rink in Portland when she was around three years old. Coach Diane Rawlinson immediately noticed that Tonya had incredible talent. And after learning of their financial situation, she agreed to coach Tonya basically for free, which she did for years. In fact, she essentially became like a mother to her, often even advising her on what clothes to wear.

Sounds like the parents were trailer trash?

While they were poor, Tonya’s father sounded like he was at least a decent guy. Tonya seems to have mostly fond memories of him, but has almost nothing good to say about her mother. I mean, do you know anyone who’s been divorced SIX times??? 😳 She said her mother even threw a knife at her one time when she was drunk.

Tonya is probably the most talented, athletic female figure skater the U.S. has ever produced. She had HUGE jumps, and was the first American (female) to ever land a triple axel jump. Actually, even though another American girl “completed” the jump about 15 years later, it was nowhere near as good as Tonya’s and probably should’ve never been ratified. Anyway, since Tonya was a tomboy who like to hunt, fish, and race cars, she always felt like an outsider in the world of skating, which preferred elegant, pretty-pretty skaters. 👸

Sam, six divorces back in those more conservative times is nuts, six marriages also, she must have had some charming qualities too.

Indeed, Scoop. That’s why I believe everything that Tonya has said about her mother. In fact, there have been witnesses who said that at the bathroom of the rink where Tonya skated, sometimes her mother would actually take her into a stall and beat her with a hairbrush! 👿

If Harding was such a good skater, why was she so threatened by Kerrigan? Why didn’t she feel she could beat her fair and square?

Excellent question. 🙂 Tonya basically peaked in the year 1991, beating both Kristi Yamaguchi and Nancy Kerrigan twice. But it seems she got kinda overconfident heading into the 1992 Olympics. Although had amazing talent, she wasn’t known for her work ethic. She didn’t arrive at the Olympics until the second week, and seemed to be jet-lagged to boot. She was also spending way too much time schmoozing with the reporters instead of actually practicing. She skated okay but not great, and ended up finishing fourth. She deserved higher marks than she got, but the judges were probably penalizing her for the lack of drive they saw in her practices. (Yes, I know, judges aren’t supposed to do that, but that’s how judging in skating often works. 😉)

Tonya had been hoping to win the gold, and I think she got really depressed afterward from failing to even win a medal. By the next season (starting in the fall of 1992), she’d probably gained about twenty pounds and was skating poorly. 🙁 In fact, at the U.S. national championships in January 1993, she gave a mediocre performance, finishing fourth and failing to make the cut for the World Team. However, in her final season (1993–1994), she started to get her act together again. But in December of that year, she skated in a competition in Japan called NHK Trophy. Unfortunately, her performances weren’t televised in the U.S. (and you can’t find any footage of them on YouTube), but she claimed that she skated great but got totally lowballed by the judges, who placed her fourth overall. (By that time, she was no longer a judges’ darling.). I think she believed that she should’ve finished at least second there.

So, she came home really depressed about her low marks at that competition. She was really worried that no matter how well she skated at the Olympics in 1994, the judges wouldn’t give her the marks she deserved, since Nancy Kerrigan was now the judges’ new favorite American.

Anyway, her husband and some of his buddies apparently hatched a plan about taking Kerrigan out. That way, if Tonya went to the Olympics as the top American, her odds of winning the gold medal would be much better. It seems that she was slow to agree to the plan (she doubted they could pull it off), but eventually said, “Okay.”

So, Scoop, Tonya was threatened by Kerrigan because skating is a judged sport—in other words, it’s very subjective. Therefore, “beating someone fair and square” isn’t necessarily a given, because the judges can give you whatever marks they want to. Tonya’s biggest fear was that even if she outskated Nancy, the judges would still place the latter first. 😬 And Tonya’s apprehensions were well-founded.

Thanks for that detailed explanation you clearly are an expert.

No problem, Scoop. Well, I was just a very avid fan. 😉 I don’t follow the sport that closely anymore, though.

Sounds like corruption and distrust of the system motivated her actions.

Right. And a couple more points to consider:

1) Every (normal) year, there are 4 Grand Slams in tennis. But in figure skating, there’s only one gold medal, which is traditionally considered the ultimate prize, and it (normally) only comes around once every four years.

2) In figure skating, HALF of the score consisted of presentation, which was very subjective and might include stuff like elegance, femininity, how pretty your costumes were, how good-looking you were, etc. Now, in theory, it wasn’t supposed to include that stuff, but in reality, it often seemed to. 😬

Tonya wasn’t bad-looking, but she wasn’t the gorgeous, frilly, pretty-pretty type of skater that the skating establishment loved so well. On the other hand, Nancy fit right in as the ice princess. Also, can you imagine if tennis were judged? If that were so, how many matches do you think Djokovic would’ve ever won again Federer or Nadal?? 😀

I was friends for a while with Oksana Baiul

Very interesting—how’d you meet her?

As she said, she had a strange ability to somehow be able to hit the back backwards not forward.

Maybe she should’ve gotten involved in “stunt tennis” then. 😎

How do you think Baiul was allowed to win the gold medal as an unknown teen from a small country?

Okay, Scoop, here’s the story. In 1992, Kristi Yamaguchi won the gold medal at the Winter Olympics and then turned pro. If you remember, they decided to hold another Winter Olympics (to stagger the schedule with the Summer Games) only two years later in 1994. Well, in 1993, Nancy Kerrigan was the big favorite at the world championships. But she had a terrible skate and ended up finishing fifth. 😮

So, there was a big void at that competition. The silver medalist, Surya Bonaly, was a French black skater and also former gymnast who, while she was a good jumper, had terrible skating technique. On the other hand, 15-year-old Oksana Baiul landed five solid triple jumps, and had lots of style and artistry to boot. So, she ended up winning the 1993 world title—mostly fairly, I’d say.

Anyway, the defending world champ is always the favorite heading into the Olympics. While Nancy Kerrigan outjumped Baiul in Lillehammer, Nancy’s choreography was weak and her skating lacked speed and pizzazz. As the world champ, Oksana did just enough—her jumps weren’t great, but she did manage to scrape by with five of them. And her pizzazz and style earned her enough favor with the judges to win by a five-to-four decision.

The decision was controversial, but I wouldn’t really call it corrupt. I think it all boiled down to the fact that Oksana was more likable than Nancy, and the judges ended up giving her the benefit of the doubt.

Or was she truly that much better than everyone else then and there was no corruption to give to to an American?

There were really no gold-medal caliber skaters (along the lines of Kristi Yamaguchi) at that event. And as I said, Oksana, with her bewitching charm and style, did just enough. It was a somewhat subjective decision, but still understandable. If Nancy Kerrigan had won the 1993 world title and still gave the same performances that she did at the Olympics, then the judges would’ve probably awarded her the gold.

But I also know an OLY gold medalist in gymnastics from 1980, from Russia and she hinted to me once that the gymnasts had to do favors

“Favors,” as in . . . ? Well, I guess we won’t go there. 😊 But yes, that is very unsettling.

A lot of opponents are hired as patsies for major moneymakers. They have no leverage and no fights and then when they get the big shot they just go through the motions to collect the check. That’s what Mawyeather did, Canelo is doing now.

Wow, I don’t see how such “opponents” could feel good about themselves knowing that they’re mostly just con artists. 🤑