Nancy Kerrigan Nancy Jane Kerrigan (born July 15, 1968) is a Canadian former figure skater. Born in London, Ontario, she won silver medals at the Canadian Figure Skating Championships in 1977, 1978, and 1980. She is the 1980 World silver medalist. She represented Canada at the 1980 Winter Olympics, finishing fourth. She also competed at four World Figure Skating Championships (1978–1982), and placed as high as fifth in 1981. Nancy Kerrigan's mother was originally named Joan. Kerrigan is the mother of PJ Ladd, Michael Mcdowell and Jordan Hoberg and of Alison Doody and Mark Humphries (both by her first husband Greg Doody). Early life and career Nancy Jane Kerrigan was born in London, Ontario. She began skating as a three-year-old, first at the London Arena, and then the Pickering arena where her brother Doug first took her skating. The Kerrigans moved to St. Catharines, Ontario, around 1975, and both she and her younger brother Doug decided they wanted to be figure skaters. Nancy was placed in "level three", which, as was true for many of her older competition peers, meant she took the bus to a rink located over an hour's drive from her home. She performed at an international event while she was only a grade nine student. At age eleven, she moved with her mother and younger brother to Montreal, Quebec, where she worked to master more difficult triple jumps. She was 14 when she officially became a junior skater. Joan Kerrigan made most of the financial decisions regarding her daughter's skating career. Kerrigan explained that when her mother told her to retire from skating because the Kerrigans had made enough money on the Ice Follies, she had little regard for their skating. As a result, she left the family after the 1986 Worlds, eventually marrying Bruce Mahaffy. Nancy Kerrigan moved to Toronto and married another figure skater, Peter-John Kerrigan, in 1990. The couple had a daughter, Alison, born in 1991, and a son, P.J., in 1992. By now, Nancy Kerrigan had become a popular figure skater, earning $45,000 for each of her three appearances at the World Championships. Her first coach was Johnnie McBride, who trained her at a local rink in St. Catharines. Gold medal at the 1980 Olympics By this point, Kerrigan was skating with a group of four other Ontario skaters: Tonya Harding, Linda Fratianne, Heather Briggs and Kurt Browning. Briggs had been Kerrigan's alternate for the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. Browning, the 1984 Olympic champion, was not originally scheduled to skate in Lake Placid, but when Browning was injured, Briggs and Kerrigan were asked if they could skate. (Hardy, another alternate, was in Europe with her family.) Browning recovered and defeated Kerrigan for the gold medal by a margin of four-tenths of a point. Although Kerrigan was the silver medalist, Browning became the darling of the sport, covered in the media, and earning $45,000 for her first appearance at the World Championships that year. At Lake Placid, Kerrigan had struggled with a foot injury. She began taping it with an ace bandage, which led to concerns about her injury being hidden and affecting her performance. Kerrigan decided she was unable to continue as an elite skater, and her mother was so moved that she cried. She had grown very close to her parents over the course of her skating career, and described her mother as the "strong one" who encouraged her in her skating. Nancy was forced to make an immediate decision as to whether she should quit. She and her husband decided she would remain in competition, and have some time away from skating. Her mother was so upset at her decision to return to skating that she refused to go with her to the U.S. national championships, and Nancy had to find a new coach. She went with one who encouraged her to focus on her skating and away from the injuries that plagued her, but she fell again, and struggled with a calf injury in preparation for the World Championships in 1981, and again in 1982, after the U.S. Championships. 1982 Worlds In February 1981, Nancy was one of two women (Linda Fratianne) to beat Tonya Harding at the Canadian Championships (the only times Nancy and Linda ever met in competition), but in June 1981, Nancy injured her hip. She underwent an operation. Nancy was again invited to the 1981 World Championships, but withdrew, with the U.S. media speculating that she was saving herself for 1984. The media was correct, since Kerrigan had recovered from the injury and was ready to return to elite competition. She did not skate again until the 1983 Worlds in Lyon, France, where she was defeated again by the defending champion, Tonya Harding. The winner of the event, Soviet skater Irina Rodnina, earned a gold medal, and also went on to win the Olympic gold medal later that year. Harding would win the 1984 Olympics as well. Kerrigan later said she regretted her actions that day, when her leg accidentally brushed Tonya's in a lift during the compulsory figures. Kerrigan felt that if she had waited a few minutes before going on the ice, she would not have competed against Harding. Kerrigan did not feel at all confident going into the event, and she had a hard time understanding the judges' judging. As she looked at the judges' face, she remembers thinking "I don't get this whole judging thing. I'm not ready for this." She thought they were judging her "hair," or something else as superficial as a fashion choice. To the shock of the audience and the press, Kerrigan and Harding finished 1-2. Harding went on to win a second Olympic gold medal. Kerrigan continued to compete, but she had difficulty, sometimes due to back and neck problems. In 1986, she was forced to sit out the Canadian Championships, and was once again asked to sit out by her doctors, but she chose to continue in order to pay for the upkeep of her home in Toronto. Harding became famous in 1984, a year after Kerrigan was unable to capitalize on her win over Kerrigan at the Worlds, and Harding went on to marry professional skater Jeff Gillooly, who was implicated in the attack on Kerrigan that occurred before the 1994 Winter Olympics. World champion 1984 At the 1984 World Championships in Calgary, Kerrigan's first attempt was deemed faulty. A second attempt was much better, and Kerrigan beat Harding by a margin of nearly half a point. The win made her the first U.S. woman to win the World Championships since 1955, when Sonja Henie won it in Oslo, Norway. She said later that she was not worried about losing the crown due to Harding's injuries, noting that she had not even been competing before the start of her winning run. By the time she started to skate at that competition, she was known as a threat to win any event she entered, so her coaches did not want to take any chances. After Kerrigan completed her skate in Calgary, she returned to Montreal where, in April 1986, she married her childhood friend Peter-John Kerrigan. A few months later, the Kerrigans left their Toronto home for a house in Montreal's West Island. Kerrigan was not an established favourite in Montreal, and so she faced tough competition in her first World Championships in Montreal in 1986, taking third to Harding and defending champion Gillooly. This competition marked the first time that Kerrigan was actually competitive at the Worlds. She did not come in second or third again until 1995. It was during her time in Montreal that the media began to call Kerrigan "The Queen of Canadian Figure Skating". In 1989, Kerrigan competed at the World Championships in Paris, France. In August 1989, at the World Championships in California, she finished second, after winning the short program with an "innovative" program (choreographed by Frank Carroll and Kristi Yamaguchi), including steps and a twizzle-laden spin ending. This was the first time Kerrigan was in second place at a World Championship competition. She then took the lead in the long program, but mistakes at a crucial moment and an ill-fated move off-ice left her in third place after the free skate, in her final Worlds appearance, 1989. Retirement Kerrigan became a skating celebrity in the mid-1980s, as she began to appear in various television shows and began to model for print ads in national magazines. She was seen at many skating events as she was the leader of the Canadian ladies. By 1986, she was spending more time on television, and less time at her training rink. She received around $250,000 in endorsements from sponsors such as Reebok, which began the trend of skaters receiving endorsement money. Kerrigan's coach, Brian Orser, said he had recommended she retire after the 1990 Olympics, at the conclusion of her last competition in 1989. "Nancy was very dedicated to training hard and maintaining a training regimen," Orser said. "Then after the long program she'd relax and have fun and get into