Life After The Glory

With every ice-gouging jump, every painted-on smile and every slip-and-slide wipeout broadcast into our homes on an incessant beam, we all know how difficult it is to become a world-class figure skater. We nod knowingly when commentators talk about turnout of feet and good position in camels.

But the past four years have taught us that there might be one thing in skating more difficult than making it to the Olympics: making it all the way back to the real world when the Games are done.

Four female skaters Lutzed out of Lillehammer in 1994 as international household names, and each would probably like to redo at least part of the re-entry. Ekaterina Gordeeva, two-time gold-medal winner in pairs skating, watched at a skating rink as her 28-year-old partner and husband died in her arms of undiagnosed heart disease, in November 1995. Oksana Baiul, the pixie 16-year-old Ukrainian orphan who struck gold in the singles, celebrated with a nonstop party that ended when she wrapped her green Mercedes-Benz around a few innocent conifers while under the influence in Connecticut. Baiul, now 20, tells TIME she is an alcoholic, and she is trying to pull herself together. Nancy Kerrigan, who took silver in a showdown watched closely by nearly everyone in the world except maybe the judges, has staged a damage-control clinic after being accused of a series of attitude crimes, including an alleged verbal assault on Mickey Mouse. And speaking of assault, Tonya Harding, the truck-driving heroine of that infamous gang of hockey pucks who conspired to conk Kerrigan on the knee--inadvertently adding a booster jet to skating's already soaring popularity--has, depending on the day, seemed just a fast buck away from wet-T-shirt contests, the roller derby or jail.

The story of the Girls of Winter Past--part tragedy, part comedy, all soap opera--"is not a real happy tale," says agent Michael Rosenberg, even though these four have helped make skating so popular that $1 million annual incomes for name skaters are now routine. Rosenberg represents 41 skaters and, with exquisite timing, dumped Harding as a client just days before the clubbing because her husband was making him nuts. "You've got Nancy with her stock suffering, Oksana never winning another competition...Katia [Gordeeva's nickname] is the only one now of the four who's on top."

As if there weren't enough twisted drama in all this, coming next into your living room is a heavily promoted Fox interview with the dynamic duo whom Rosenberg calls Snow White and the Wicked Witch: Nancy and Tonya.

Pass the Chee-tohs, Billy Bob.

The interview was taped two weeks ago in Colorado--along with some skating, for which Baiul, Gordeeva and Katerina Witt, according to a published report, refused to be in the same building as Harding; Tonya was banished to an outdoor rink. This lovely episode of Soap Stars on Ice will air Feb. 5, just before opening ceremonies at the Winter Games in Nagano, Japan.

Did Tonya say she's sorry? "No. She didn't apologize," Kerrigan told TIME last week.

Well, here's an even bigger question, and one a lot of people in the incestuous world of skating were asking last week when they heard about the latest face-off.

What were you thinking, Nancy?