Tonya Harding And Nancy Kerrigan's The Price Of Gold

On January 16, 2014, the ESPN documentary series, 30 for 30, introduced a new installment called The Price of Gold, which focuses on the unorthodox incident that involved Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, two well-known figure skaters in the 1990s. Nancy Kerrigan was assaulted while training for major figure skating competitions, and it was shown that the people closest to Tonya Harding were involved with Kerrigan’s assault. This film explores what happened from Tonya’s point of view and the struggles she had to face mentally, legally, and emotionally. This scandal between Harding and Kerrigan shows that sports can be a beneficial outlet for individuals, but it can also have unfortunate, and even unexpected, downsides when being involved in
After the practice session, Nancy got off the ice and walked behind a curtain to the dressing room. There was then a yell heard from behind the certain, and her team rushed to find Nancy on the floor crying. According to Nancy, a man hit her knee cap and ran away. On January 7, 1994, it was reported that Nancy would not be competing in the Leggs US Figure Skating Championships because of a bad bone bruise on the knee cap of her landing leg. Because the Leggs US Figure Skating Championships and the Figure Skating Olympics were a couple weeks away, many people immediately suspected figure skater, Tonya Harden, her main rival at the time. As time passed, there was speculation that Tonya, Tonya’s husband Jeff Gillooly, and Tonya’s “bodyguard” Shawn Eckardt planned the attack. Shawn Eckardt was arrested but posted bail, and Derrick Smith and Shane Stant of Portland were in FBI custody. Smith allegedly drove the getaway car and Shane was suspected to be the hitman. Gillooly was eventually arrested as well. When they were arrested, Gillooly, Smith, Stant, and Eckardt never stated that Tonya was in on the whole plan until almost 3 weeks after the incident happened. On January 27, Tonya had a press conference saying she had no prior knowledge on the attack on Nancy, but she should have reported to the police the information she did know about the attack after it
I believe this film identifies that violence not only exists with the athlete that is playing the sport, but the people who are associated with the athlete. I feel like the violence was first introduced at the beginning of Tonya’s life because it mentioned that her mom was violent with Tonya and her father was jumping from job to job, so she didn’t have the best support system. Also, when Tonya got married to her husband, Jeff Gillooly, many people in the documentary mentioned how he seemed very possessive of her as well, which can be a part of the dark side of sport because it shows how people can get involved with a negative crowd. I believe that the scandal messed with Tonya’s moral values because moral values influences how to act well towards others (Leopkey, 2016). Because she wasn’t honest about her suspicion with her husband, I feel like her judgement of what was right and wrong was skewed. In addition, I honestly believe that the men who were primarily involved with the scandal displayed an act of moral disengagement because of the diffused responsibility (Leopkey, 2016). Jeff and the other men involved had ultimately spread the responsibility of the attack to Tonya, who claimed she had nothing to do with it. For example, while Tonya was being interviewed about the scandal, Jeff was also there in the same room looking at her, and it