Listen to the full interview via the podcast.

Exactly 20 years ago, something scarcely believable occurred to figure skater Nancy Kerrigan.

She was practicing at a skating rink when a hitman (yes, quite literally) struck her just above the kneecap with a police baton in a bid to incapacitate her and put her out of the 1994 Figure Skating Championships.

It turned out that her rival Tonya Harding had been behind the attack and in the aftermath it came to light that her ex-husband and her bodyguard had conspired to injure Kerrigan.

EM Swift reported on the story for Sports Illustrated at the time and tonight he looked back on one of the most infamous moments in US sports history.

Initially, Kerrigan recovered relatively quickly from the attack. She missed the Figure Skating Championships but made it on to the 1994 Olympic team - alongside Harding.

"She and many other people had hoped that Tonya Harding would be kicked off the Olympic team. But Harding was not. The final challenge for Kerrigan was to be able to train and practice in Lillehammer with the woman who had arranged for her to be attacked. That was another mental challenge," said Swift. 

But it was a challenge that Kerrigan rose to, putting in an outstanding performance to earn a silver medal at the Winter Games, while Harding floundered in seventh.

But what could have motivated Harding to commit such a foul and risky act against a fellow athlete?

"Kerrigan was a little bit thrown under the bus and lumped in with this quite horrible person," said Swift who painted a picture of Harding's background.

"Kerrigan had a functioning and caring family and Tonya Harding did not. She came from a very dysfunctional family and was not on speaking terms with her mother. She claimed to have been sexually molested by her half-brother. She was an outsider in the figure skating world which had to do with her personality. She was a tough street kid who had no gentility. She played pool, raced stock cars, fixed her own brakes...she was a tough kid and she didn't have any friends in figure skating. All that contributed to her being able to hatch this plan of debilitating her chief rival."

Fortunately for all involved, the plan and its execution was a "clownish effort" with the accomplices easily caught by the FBI and police after leaving a discernible trail behind. The hitman also bungled every stage of the operation including the attack as he missed Kerrigan's knee cap, while the bodyguard was caught after boasting about the crime.

 

Main image (l to r): Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan