This Is What Nancy Kerrigan Is Up To Now
Thanks to the success of I, Tonya, the twenty four–year old story of Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan is back in the news, with a renewed focus on what its star players, Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan are doing so long after the incident that left Kerrigan with an injured leg and Harding with a tarnished name. Tonya Harding has passed the years in her own way and most recently turned up at the 2018 Golden Globes alongside the cast of I, Tonya, but Nancy Kerrigan, the victim-turned-Olympics-hero, had a much different path in the years since the infamous attack.
After The Incident
Nancy Kerrigan famously bounced back from the blow to her leg that led to her televised cries of “why, why, why.” The extra attention on the figure skater led to her receiving several lucrative endorsement deals ahead of her competing in the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics, which totaled several million dollars. She went on to win the silver medal in her event, which should have buoyed her to the place of an American hero, but CBS aired a comment Kerrigan made about her gold-winning opponent (she objected to waiting for the medal ceremony when someone told her it was because the Ukrainian skater had to get her makeup fixed), she appeared more callous than her “sweetheart” image predicted. After the Olympics, Kerrigan was also recorded at a Disney parade complaining that the event was “the corniest thing [she had] ever done,” which added to the tarnishing of her reputation.
Her Later Career
After retiring from competitive skating after the Lillehammer Olympics, Kerrigan continued to skate professionally, performing in the televised, non-Union competition Ice Wars in 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998, and again in 2005. She also hosted Saturday Night Live in 1994. In 2001, she appeared in an all-skating production of Footloose and skated for two years on the Champions on Ice tour. In 2017 she danced on the 24th season of Dancing With The Stars and came in seventh place. She also founded the Nancy Kerrigan Foundation in 1999, which serves those with impaired eyesight.
Marriage and Family
In 1995, just one year after the Lillehammer Olympics, Nancy Kerrigan married her agent Jerry Solomon, and they have remained married since then. While there was some speculation that their relationship began with an affair (the marriage was Jerry’s third), both Kerrigan and Solomon have denied that they had an inappropriate relationship while Solomon was still married to his second wife. One year after their marriage they had one child, Matthew Solomon, and they later had two more children: Brian Solomon in 2005 and Nicole Solomon in 2008. Kerrigan has been open about suffering multiple miscarriages in the time between having Matthew and Brian, which she revealed while appearing on Dancing With The Stars.
In 2010, Kerrigan’s father died outside of their family home in Boston. Her brother Mark Kerrigan was arrested and tried for manslaughter, as a physical altercation between father and son occurred directly before the death. The charges of manslaughter were dropped, but Mark Kerrigan was found guilty of assault and battery, and was set to serve two-and-a-half years before being released early in 2012.
On Tonya Harding
Nancy remained tight-lipped about her injury and scandal in the year after the incident. It wasn't until 1998 that Fox aired Breaking the Ice, a television special in which Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan met for the first time since the Lillehammer Olympics in 1994 (Harding and Kerrigan did not speak to each other on camera while participating in the Olympic competition). On the special, Kerrigan said “I never had anything against [Harding] personally, so I don’t understand how it all happened.” When Harding entered the room on the TV special, Kerrigan was visibly irritated, and when Tonya apologized “for being in the wrong place at the wrong time around the wrong people,” Kerrigan did not respond. She did not participate in the 2014 ESPN 30 for 30: The Price of Gold special about the attack. Later in 2014 she was interviewed for NBC’s Nancy & Tonya, an hourlong documentary in which she described the entire situation as “sad” and said “I don’t dwell on it.” The two were not put face-to-face for the NBC documentary. Kerrigan has not commented on I, Tonya, but has maintained that she believes Harding had a role in the attack.
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