ESPN 30 For 30: The Price Of Gold (2014)
This documentary is about the infamous Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan incident of 1994. It has gossip, dirt, slutty skating dresses and a badly aged Tonya Harding. In 1994 Harding was a hard-bitten blue-collar skater with frizzy hair, garish costumes and raw talent. Nancy Kerrigan was also a blue-collar skater with a bad perm but she had styled herself to match the ice princess look that is essential for endorsements and deals.
Harding was discovered and still practised on an ice rink in a shopping mall and was desperate to make the Olympic team. She would have made it anyway but she saw Kerrigan and her kitschy costumes as standing in her way. So Harding’s then husband/thuggish lowlife Jeff Gillooly attempted to injure Kerrigan so she wouldn’t make the 1994 Olympics. Even at that, they failed.
Kerrigan and Harding competed on the same Olympic team to huge rating. Kerrigan got silver and Tonya got and continues to get nothing. Harding’s legacy is a punch line. This interesting documentary covers class issues and Connie Chung recalls covering the circus back in the day.
Harding rants about being judged, snobby judges and an unforgiving Kerrigan. Harding rants about how judges didn’t like her pink homemade costume, yet nobody offered her $5000 for a costume. Harding had no endorsements or sponsorship and skated to ZZ Top. This was an okay look at unrelentingly haughty skating types and the truth is glaringly absent from Harding’s account. This is a testament to the awful power of personality in the ice world.
Best Lines:
“They want to hit me with sticks and baseball bats.”
“The Barbie dolls of sports.”
“Of what a ladies champion is supposed to look like.”
“Very, very expensive sport.”
“What a bitch.”
“Very snob sport.”
“The hair and blue fingernail polish.”
“Under the table advice.”
“A couple of thugs and a bad perm.”
“She’s a princess and I’m a piece of crap.”
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Tonya & Nancy: The Inside Story (1994)
A metafiction TV movie starring James Wilder and Heather Lagenkamp. This is all sappy melodrama about the infamous ice skating rivalry.