Skategate a sorry incident
MIKE MORAN; SPECIAL TO THE GAZETTE
TO THE READERS: U.S. Olympic Committee Chief Communications Officer Mike Moran has spent 24 years with the organization and will retire Dec. 31. In this continuing series, Moran reflects on the organization's growth and presence in the city and the people who made it happen, and describes some of the behind-the-scenes events that shaped Olympic history. LILLEHAMMER, NORWAY February 13, 1994 ''Whatever you do, don't smile,'' USOC Executive Director Harvey Schiller reminded me seconds before the two of us opened a midnight press briefing in the Main Press Center to announce that the USOC had agreed to let Tonya Harding skate in the Winter Games, momentarily ending a soap opera that began Jan.6 in Detroit. It was hardly the finish to this bizarre, twisted production. The nocturnal media briefing followed the Opening Ceremonies and a long session of the USOC's Executive Committee during which the decision was reached to allow Harding to skate, and that there was no hope of a hearing or action on her case in Norway. In the aftermath of the January attack on Nancy Kerrigan at the U.S. National Championships, the USOC could not involve law enforcement personnel in a proposed hearing, and we had been sued for $20million by Harding. Faced with incredible obstacles and massively divided media and public opinion, we chose to take the path of least resistance. Schiller knew other athletes deserved the spotlight. This was not about lawsuits. Schiller had been a singular source of strength and calm during this dizzying spectacle that had ensnared the American public and the world's media in its grip of daytime soap drama, crazy story angles, plots, accusations, arrests and a protracted criminal investigation in Portland, Ore. Harding had not been charged with anything at this point, in fact. With more than 800 reporters, live television feeds back to the United States, and a buzz in the press hall like none I had seen since the 1980 media session with our gold medal-winning ice hockey team, Schiller and I opened our program with two prepared statements. Harvey, a brilliant and charismatic leader who was in the process of leading the USOC to five of its most productive years in history, had taken a lead role in settling this controversy when President LeRoy Walker had been hobbled by knee surgeries and the organization embroiled in quicksand over what to do with Harding. He was equal to the challenge. We had been instructed by the Executive Committee to make our statements and leave, taking no questions or elaborating on our decision. Harvey read our statement, and I read Harding's, written by attorneys. I had written the USOC statement, which stated, "We are appalled still by the attack on Nancy Kerrigan, which was not only an attack on the athlete, but an assault on the basic ideals of the Olympic Movement and sportsmanship. The attack was designed to cripple her, alter the competition, and could have ended her career. We remain deeply concerned about this incident.'' Schiller exited after we read our statements, but I got caught up in the crush of reporters and cameras at the bottom of the stage. I also felt that there were questions to be answered and spin dispensed, and, if I got fired for doing so, who cared? I stood for 90 minutes with my USOC sidekick, Jim Fox, and told our side of things. It was the most intense experience I have ever enjoyed as the USOC chief spokesman. Two days later, Harding arrived at the Oslo airport, where we had to take her off the plane away from the terminal because of the media hordes awaiting her arrival. We got her accredited and into the Olympic Village like a scene from some sort of CIA-related flick, with USOC security chief Larry Buendorf, once a Secret Service agent who protected President Gerald Ford, wondering aloud how he had ended up in this vortex. On Feb. 18, we forced Harding and her attorneys to agree to a morning press conference, as mandated by our code. Kerrigan, fully recovered, had done hers already. It was without a doubt two hours that I will remember as the wackiest, most bizarre experience of my USOC career. All of it was broadcast live in the United States. On the stage in front of more than 1,600 media, were Harding, her coach Diane Rawlinson, U.S. Figure Skating's media executive Kristin Matta and myself. We had agreed with Harding's lawyers to have Kristin and me pose some softball questions to Harding for 10 minutes before opening the question-and-answer session to the media. The idea was to soften what would come. It was like a wall of sand built against a tidal wave. Jere Longman of the New York Times got the first shot at Harding and asked her why anyone in the hall should believe her. That was followed by question after question about the attack on Kerrigan, Harding's ex-husband and three others who had been arrested in what was emerging as a plot. Harding denied any involvement and asked to respond only to questions about her skating. I let this circus last for 90minutes before breaking it up and allowing a very angry Harding and her lawyers to leave with security guards for her car. As I left the stage, Connie Chung of CBS got in my face to demand a private interview with Harding, who, unknown to us, had agreed to some exclusive interviews with one of the tabloid shows. I told Chung to contact Harding's attorney. The irony of the whole morning was that I had announced to the packed crowd of media 10 minutes prior to the start of the session that speedskater Dan Jansen, the quintessential Olympian, had won the 1,000 meters in Hamar, some 40 miles away, in his final race of a star-crossed Olympic career filled with disappointment and tough luck. How I wished that morning that I could have been there rather than being the ringmaster for this comedy. You know the rest. Harding skated badly and finished eighth. Kerrigan lost the gold medal by a razor-thin margin to Oksana Baiul. Harding accepted a plea bargain March16 on a conspiracy charge in the attack and avoided prison. She was banned for life from skating. We banned her from our White House Olympic team visit and tried to beef up our code of conduct to protect the USOC in future incidents like this one. The media frenzy eventually abated, though Harding's every incident and appearance since attracts coverage. Many of my media friends, like Christine Brennan of USA Today, still try to put the whole thing in perspective but can't, and she has written superb books since about the sport of skating and the Tonya-Nancy saga. Lost for a while in my memory was the trip I made to Detroit just a day after the attack on Kerrigan in January and what I accomplished. It makes me laugh even now at my own lack of a clue as to what would transpire, and what it was all about. I went to Detroit to sit down with each skater who made the Olympic Team about dealing with the media at the Games, and how to handle the intense scrutiny and attention. My first session was with Harding, who had won the ladies' event after Kerrigan was injured. For an hour, with her coach sitting in, I preached to Tonya about her chance to realize a dream in Lillehammer. I told her this was a chance to repair her image, which included smoking and some tough behavior. I mentioned how she could send a message to people with asthma about smoking and to become a role model for young girls. She was, after all, the national champion and a favorite for a medal in Lillehammer. She endured my lecture and never looked me in the eyes. Guess now I know why. On that January afternoon, I knew nothing about what awaited me in the next two months. In the rest of that month, and until we departed for Norway in February, our staff and the USOC as a whole were subjected to thousands of calls, fax messages and e-mails. We had to hire temporary operators to handle the calls from the public, split on the issue of kicking her off the team or keeping her on. The media was about the same, some demanding her ouster on the issue of the appearance of involvement and others standing behind the innocent-until-proven-guilty theory. I received calls from radio talk shows in the middle of the night, and from reporters on the average of 100 times per day. The bottom line, in Norway, was that the USOC wanted to stop the madness and put the spotlight back on athletes like Bonnie Blair, Jansen, Tommy Moe, Diann Roffe-Steinrotter, Kerrigan, Cathy Turner and many others. It was their time in the sun, and they deserved better than this mockery of their dreams and hopes. They won their medals and made Americans proud in the process, but some measure of their moments were stolen by this mess. Schiller left the USOC late in 1994 to become the president of Turner Sports, later the chairman of YankeeNets, and now the president and CEO of Assante USA. He also played a big role in the successful bid by New York City to be selected as our candidate city for the 2012 Games. He and I have smiled over a lot since that midnight session in Lillehammer in 1994, but the subject has rarely been Tonya and Nancy and the story that engulfed us both, and millions of others, in a time we'd really rather forget. -CUTLINE- PHOTOS BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - LEATHER AND LACE: Tonya Harding's rough image didn't get any better after she plea bargained to a conspiracy charge in the attack on Nancy Kerrigan. Harding got a re-skate at the Olympics after a lace problem and finished eighth. Kerrigan was second. -CUTLINE- THE HEROINE: Nancy Kerrigan became America's darling heading into the 1994 Olympics, overcoming a shot in the kneecap to finish second to Oksana Baiul. Kerrigan's image also suffered after she was caught dismissing a parade as "Mickey Mouse" on tape.