Margot Robbie stars in the Tonya Harding biopic 'I, Tonya.'
There has never been an incident in sport like it.
Twenty five years ago, to the day, ice skater American Nancy Kerrigan was turned into one of sport's most famous victims and her comptariot Tonya Harding among the most infamous villains.
After a practice session at the American figure skating championships in Detroit, an assailant smashed Kerrigan's right knee with a police baton. The attacker turned out to be an associate of Jeff Gillooly, the ex-husband of Kerrigan's skating rival Harding.
The story quickly exploded around the world.
Video showed Kerrigan screaming "Why, why, why?", a question which has been answered although Harding's precise role is unclear.
Having admitted a charge of hindering the prosecution, Harding was banned from skating which helped force her into some interesting career and life paths.
Nancy Kerrigan insists Tonya Harding was involved in the attack on her. Phot / Getty
She has done it all: drink-driving arrests, boxing, wrestling coach, Dancing with the Stars, lead singer in her band Golden Blades and even landscape gardening.
The overall impression is of a troubled character who has found peace in recent years, and she is estranged from her domineering mother.
Harding was also the subject of a superb movie I, Tonya, which came out two years ago and portrayed the plotters as bumbling low-lives operating under the misapprehension that they were master criminals.
If Harding was blameless, she hasn't helped her cause by keeping empathy for Kerrigan to a minimum, while blaming her trailer park upbringing for the bad publicity.
"It's an image that the media has given me as a bad girl ... because of the few things that have gone wrong in my life," Harding said.
"I have apologised so many times ... she (Kerrigan) is not worth my time anymore."
Nancy Kerrigan has glided off into relative obscurity since the attack. Photo / Getty
Gillooly, who was jailed, has been apologetic, and also regrets how the attack overshadowed what a brilliant skater Harding was, something the movie helps address.
I,Tonya gave Harding both star and sympathetic treatment, forcing Kerrigan to remind people: "I was the victim".
Kerrigan struck image problems of her own, appearing ungracious at finishing second in the Olympics, and later dissing a Disney parade. And scandal arrived when her brother was found guilty of assault and battery, following an incident in which the Kerrigans' father died outside their Boston home.
Kerrigan has remained, in the main, tight-lipped about the incident, although there was one tetchy face-to-face meeting with Harding for a TV special.
Kerrigan still believes Harding was involved, but has also said she doesn't hold anything personal against her.
Nancy Kerrigan has had her share of controversies. Photo / Getty
"I don't dwell on it," she said on an NBC documentary.
Memories of that extraordinary incident are being stoked this month, with the US figure skating championships returning to Detroit for the first time since 1994.
"They say history repeats itself," a U.S. Figure Skating promotion proclaimed, before adding brazenly: "It's been 25 years since Detroit was the epicentre of the figure skating world."
Which actually understates the case. For a brief time, figure skating was world news.
