Tonya Harding

What would a figure skating championship in Portland, Ore., be without a mention of Tonya Harding, the local legend who put the ax in triple axel? More specifically a plastic baton wielded by a friend of her then-hubby, Jeff Gillooly, he of wedding night video fame, to kneecap Nancy Kerrigan at the 1994 championships. Well, Harding, 35, isn't here. She's on her way to a nightclub outside the City of Brotherly Love for a professional boxing match Wednesday against a woman who agreed to a $1,000 paycheck in return for attempting to beat the tar out of Tonya.

AS WE Americans become more and more simultaneously attuned to the regular news alongside equally important Celebrity Affairs, certain misapprehensions are bound to occur. And some of these are likely to be quirky ones.Recently, for instance, I momentarily became convinced that superstar Michael Jackson and figure skater Tonya Harding might somehow be involved in the Whitewater affair that persistently dogs President Clinton.Absurd, you say? Well, of course it is -- on a purely rational level.

David Halberstam had been planning to speak about the 1950s for the Frank R. Kent Memorial Lecture at Johns Hopkins University tonight. But Tonya Harding changed his mind.Rather, it was the media's overheated coverage of the Olympic skater's trials and tribulations that got him concerned -- along with what he sees as the increasing tendency of the press to concentrate on the trivial at the expense of the important.So he's shelved his original topic, "The Fifties -- Then and Now," in favor of a speech that will pointedly criticize much of modern journalism, he said in a phone conversation from his New York home.

On TV, it's a day where conversation reigns. One controversial celebrity, Mike Tyson, speaks from prison in a taped interview on "Larry King Live." Another, Tonya Harding, speaks to Rolonda Watts in a taped interview on "Rolonda." And in what, by comparison, is a breath of fresh air time, Charles Kuralt chats with Morley Safer in a taped interview for a highly recommended CBS special.* "Rolonda." (11 a.m.-noon, WJZ, Channel 13) -- Of all the talk-show hosts out there, how did Ms. Watts land Tonya Harding for her first extended post-Olympics sit-down?

The violence that nearly redistributed the Olympic Gold Medal in Ladies Figure Skating was the crash in practice Thursday of two 16-year-olds skating backward. But it didn't. Oksana Baiul of Ukraine skated in a bandage and pain, beautifully, last night. The favorite, which she had been all along, won by a narrow margin.Ms. Baiul had stood second after the short program on Wednesday, and Tanja Szewczenko of Germany fifth, when they injured each other. That seemingly opened up the competition, making any outcome possible.

NANCY Kerrigan grew up in Stoneham, Mass., a medium-sized town a few miles north of Boston.But these days she must feel as though she's living in old Salem Village, given the witch hunt to which she's been subjected.Unless you were a figure skating junkie, you hadn't heard or thought much about Ms. Kerrigan until early January. Then she was criminally assaulted in a Detroit arena, an attack that easily could have left her in a wheelchair.In the aftermath of the assault, Ms. Kerrigan made no comments at all about her skating opponent Tonya Harding, who may yet prove to have been directly involved in planning the attack.

Some troublemaker asked the other day if I was sick of hearing about Tonya and Nancy, and of course I said no."Are you a communist?" I asked her.She seemed startled by this."

In a way, the music said it all. Tonya Harding skated her Olympic Games technical program yesterday to "Much Ado About Nothing."To many, that sums up this whole Tonya-Nancy melodrama, which has gripped America since Nancy Kerrigan was whacked on the knee Jan. 6, and which will have its on-ice conclusion tomorrow night in Hamar, Norway.There has been much ado about it, all right.On Feb. 6, when lawsuits and countersuits were being filed and the FBI was investigating the attack on Kerrigan and trying to determine if Tonya Harding had a role in it, Baltimore City's state's attorney, Stuart Simms, gave a talk at the Second Presbyterian Church.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Figure skating is fantasy. It is bright, light music and shimmering costumes and judges who sling fur coats over the backs of their seats and apply the final marks to performances that are part Broadway, part Magic Kingdom.And then along comes someone like Tonya Harding who feeds the fairy tale even while distancing herself from a troubled past.In the last year, the defending U.S. Figure Skating ladies' champion has separated from her husband and her coach, and then reconciled with both, taken up drag racing, and then given it up. Her life story is being pried open even as she trains to reach a lifelong dream of becoming an Olympian.

ALBERTVILLE, France -- Tonya Harding finally arrived at the Olympics yesterday, cutting something of a mysterious figure.She said she thought it was "just best" for her to spend the first 10 days of the Games at home, in Portland, Ore.She said she was using a new combination of new and old skating boots, but wouldn't reveal the details. "[The boots] are part of my strategy for skating a perfect routine," she said.She said she had lost some weight in the past month, but wouldn't say how much or why. "My weight is my personal business," she said, allowing that, "eating three square meals a day by my mother-in-law put weight on me."