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No, Harding’s talents are not as rarefied as are those of Nancy Kerrigan or Oksana Baiul, but if she can finish eighth in the world by displaying “clumsy style and slovenly technique,” what does this imply about the talents and accomplishments of all those who finished below her? Or of all those who didn’t even make it to the Olympics? Personally, I find Nancy Kerrigan’s “broad gestures” (as Boomer calls them) awkward and aesthetically displeasing, but I don’t think this defect makes her an athlete of “meager talents.” So why must we praise one athlete’s skills by denigrating those of another?
But back to figure skating. I think that the general denigration of Tonya Harding’s talents has as much to do with her figure as with what she does with it. Boomer notes that while the judging criteria of figure skating are inflected by gender-specific notions of bodily decorum, both male and female athletes can exhibit grace. But when he extols Kerrigan for her “long lines” and Baiul for her “delicate arm movements,” and both for their “swanlike grace,” I hear these women being called graceful because they are tall and thin and have long arms, and Harding “slovenly” because she is short and stocky. Bonnie Blair has big thighs just like Tonya, but to Boomer, Blair has “a certain intense grace about her–grace not in the feminine sense but in an athletic sense.” But apparently, possessing that kind of grace is not good enough to get Tonya Harding called anything but a mediocre hack also-ran.
