As The World Turns

It was a virtual Tonya-rama. It was a veritable Kerriganza. It was an AMERIKANSK SÅPEOPERA, according to Norwegian tabloids, a story so absurd and so appalling that it seemed to single-handedly create a market for...for Norwegian tabloids.

And yet, it was difficult to select the most absurd, the most appalling moment involving the two American figure skaters at the XVII Olympic Winter Games in Gilloolehammer, Norway.

Was it when a Portland, Ore., minister told Tonya Harding before her departure for Norway last week that she was "skating for Christ"? (Absurd.) Or when hostile journalists greeted her at the Games by implying to her face that she was, instead, skatin' for Satan? (Appalling.)

Was it when a member of the Nancy Kerrigan camp suggested, seriously, that Nancy might wear goalie pads to the first practice she would share with Tonya? Or was it when Nancy showed up wearing, instead, the same outfit she wore while being clubbed above the right knee on Jan. 6 in Detroit, an attack planned by Harding's ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, who has sought to implicate Tonya in the scheme.

No, surely the most absurd, the most appalling moment came at Kerrigan's first press conference two weeks ago in Lillehammer, when Mike Moran, the event's moderator and the chief spokes-man for the U.S. Olympic Committee, actually asked her the following question: "How would you handicap the field?"

The world was waiting at gate 34 of Oslo's international airport on the morning of Feb. 16 in the form of a hundred photographers and reporters. At precisely 10:52 a.m., SAS flight 4470 from Copenhagen taxied to the Jetway, and someone yelled in English, "It's showtime!"

Roger, Houston: The Tonya had landed.

In the 24 hours before the plane's touchdown, Harding's attorney denied that his client would pose naked for Playboy: Harding talked about establishing a charitable fund for Special Olympians; A Current Affair aired a tape, which had reportedly been bought from Harding's former husband, of Tonya simultaneously topless and in a wedding dress; and Harding's mother, LaVona Golden, had fainted on the set of The Montel Williams Show.

So naturally, when the Jetway at gate 34 belched out Connie Chung, a man named Anders of Channel 2 in Oslo approached the CBS newswoman and posed the following question: "Why is this story so interesting to Americans?" And that's the way it was all week. No media types would admit to covering this story; they all claimed to be covering the coverage of this story.

Likewise for Olympic participants. The coach of a Korean skater assigned to the same packed-house practice sessions as Harding and Kerrigan would aptly call the nuthouse scene at the figure skating training facility both "sick" and "pathetic" but certainly not interesting.