Not sure if this has been shared here yet... Rolonda Watts' 1994 interview with Tonya Harding:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95rjRhjESUg
About halfway through the hour long interview, the video freezes but the audio's fine throughout.
I finally got a chance to watch this when I couldn't sleep last night. Tonya actually comes across very well in this interview, about the best I've seen her. She is pleasant, not defensive, has a good rapport with Rolonda, and appears to take responsibility for some of her actions. The attack on Kerrigan isn't discussed directly and it's not exactly a hard-hitting interview, but it's one of the few times (if not the only time) I've seen her say that she wishes she would have practiced more leading up to the 1992 Olympics for example. It goes to show that if she could have packaged that, there was something to work with there.
I also watched the TV movie from 1994 on YouTube. I forgot how good that was. It was almost a parody of a TV movie, with the scene of the network execs planning the movie that was being shown. But they did an impressive job. Even covered the two different sides of Jeff's story vs Tonya's. It's too bad the audio is wrecked for about 15 min early on in the YouTube video but it was still a good use of my time to watch it.
One thing I have been curious about: Just how underscored was Tonya Harding in her career?
I mean, compared with many other skaters who have complained about being underscored, or skaters for whom fans did the complaining, where does Harding fall in the list of skaters throughout history who appeared to be consistently low-balled, real or perceived?
The one time I can think of when Tonya was blatantly robbed is the 1987 NHK that bardtoob posted earlier in the thread, but that was more about holding up Witt than anything, as Ito was also robbed badly. So it was more of a "wait your turn" than personal against Harding. Some other occasions of questionable judging have been discussed recently in this thread - 1989 Nationals (some people feel this is highway robbery, some think it could have gone either way), 1993 Nationals (messy event with mixed ordinals), maybe 1993 NHK (who knows, we only have Tonya's opinion on this one).
I'm trying to think if there are other ones...maybe 1992 Olympics? She was 6th in the SP having fallen on a triple axel behind Ito who fell on a triple lutz. You could maybe argue she should have beat Kerrigan in the free program, although neither of them had very good free programs. I feel like when you consider both programs together, the podium ended up in the right place.
All of this is a long winded way of saying that, 1987 NHK aside, I feel like when Tonya nailed a skate, she got the marks. However, when she didn't skate well, she probably didn't get the benefit of the doubt and generally didn't win close calls.
