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Love the podcast ladies. We missed Kira last week. Just wanted to give you feedback cause I know you love feedback. I really love your podcast. You ladies chat like I do and makes me wish I had more girlfriends who agreed with me politically. Keep up the good work ladies.
Great podcast ! I’m now definately going to try to see the ESPN documentary and the new movie on Tanya Harding. Both are things I wouldn’t otherwise have looked at.
After listening to this conversation, I remembered a term from a high school English class and Googled it. I Googled “Tragic flaw”. Tanya’s tragic flaw (I’m hearing Lady Brains say) seems to have been that her background left her with dented radar that kept her from seeing just how bad it was to be mixed up with the man she made her husband. Then, when she finally did begin to see, it seemed to her she was too deeply enmeshed to go about getting out of the marriage without also giving up her chance and focus to prepare for the Olympics. In a way, she put second things first and ended up with neither, as the saying goes. But it’s a mistake to be sure we would have had better priorities in her place and with her drive.
I just want to say that while Nancy Kerrigan’s people were classier and better spoken than Tanya’s, they were hardworking and no more than middle income. I’m sure they had more money than Tanya’s mother had, but they were also described as “blue collar” people. On the other hand, Mr. and Mrs. Kerrigan may have been as they appeared at the time to be: good, intelligent, sane people who loved their daughter.
I think the Russian would have won anyway. But, I think the fact that Nancy Kerrigan (like the rest of us) will never know for sure that she wouldn’t have won, had she not been the victim of that terrifying, painful and physically damaging attack (Did she also loose practice time recovering from it?) is very much more unfair than what Tanya lost by not leaving her husband and then turning him in as soon as she knew he had made death threats on Kerrigan.
Kira always has such interesting stories, Teri. The one about she and her husband, where she asked him if they would be married if she “gave in” to him was really lovely. Bravo to her for sharing it. I also liked her other stories. I am not a big a fan of the President, as you ladies are, but Kira is absolutely right: This is not a dictatorship, where you are carried away. If you dislike Trump so much, go and meet him. Tell him what’s in your heart.
It was rather long, but Kira made it interesting, as I was eating breakfast. So did you and April, of course. Didn’t know about Tanya’s problems growing up. What a shame, to have a Mom like that!
You are so sweet! Thank you for listening. (And we’re glad to have Kira back, too!!!)
This is very true. It’s just sad all the way around — that Nancy will never know if she could’ve won gold (I agree that Oksana would’ve won regardless, she was amazing — but she’s also a very sad story) and that Tonya didn’t have the smarts/upbringing to know better than to get involved with that husband of hers.
Ha, we were a bit long-winded this week!! It’s so frustrating to see young women not valuing themselves enough to avoid situations like the one between “Grace” and Aziz Ansari. I want to smack all them upside their pretty little heads!!!
I recommend I, Tonya, too. But don’t wait for a wider release: possibly because of the failure of the tennis movie, Battle of the Sexes, earlier in the year, I don’t think it’s getting one. Which is too bad, because I, Tonya is a much better movie.
Oksana Baiul, who beat Nancy Kerrigan for the gold medal in figure skating, was Ukrainian, not Russian. This was a few years after Ukraine voted for independence from Russia — which meant that the money the Russian government used to lavish on figure skating was gone (and Russian judges would be rooting against Baiul).
A New York Times reporter who watched Baiul practice back home said she was on ice so bad that he was amazed she could skate at all, much less figure skate. But that may have given her an edge when she finally got good ice during the Olympics.
A long-time figure skating fan tells me Baiul won the gold because she improvised an unscheduled jump at the end of her routine, when skaters are usually too tired to do that.
She also said that, because American judges didn’t like Tonya, they would always try to shave points from her scores. This was something the movie didn’t really bring out.
As for the argument that figure skaters should be judged on athleticism only: without the aesthetic element, figure skating would just be another sport women can’t do as well as men.