She ought to be grateful that Hollywood thought she deserved this actress to play her

Eddie Hazel's E string: jaytkay: I only knew her as a punchline back in the 90s. From what I've read in recent years, her story is a tragedy in the classical sense. She was US champ and was performing jumps nobody else could do before her figurative fall.

"Harding's breakthrough year came in 1991 when, at the U.S. Championships, she completed her first triple Axel in competition on February 16 - the first American woman to execute the jump. She landed seven triple jumps in the long program including the triple Axel. She won the 1991 U.S. Ladies' Singles title with the event's first 6.0 technical merit score since Janet Lynn's 1973 performance at the U.S. Championships."

/ I, Tonya is an excellent movie
// It gave me new respect for Margot Robbie and new empathy for Tonya Harding

If you know anyone with ESPN+, the 30 for 30 documentary called The Price of Gold is a great account of her rise, fall, and "the incident." I enjoyed I, Tonya for the acting and skate sequences but got a better scoop on the nuts and bolts of her motivations from the documentary.

My biggest takeaway was that figure skating largely consists of beauty queens, teenagers that came from monied families. Tonya was a powerfully strong athlete and really pushed the sport in a new direction, despite not conforming to everyone's beauty standards and having trouble paying for the elaborate costumes that were often required for competitions. Skating fans are traditionalists and favored Nancy Kerrigan simply because she had that "America's sweetheart" factor that Tonya didn't. Tonya was stubborn, self-confident, and ended up associating with the wrong crowd. I still admire her as an athlete.

Lol, no.  Competitive figure skating isn't something flighty teenagers just decide to go out and do one day.  The ones competing at the national and international levels have been doing it since they could barely walk and spend many hours every day on the ice, pretty much dedicating their entire lives to the sport.  This should come as no surprise since most every other sport is the same way.

As to money, yes it takes a lot to afford competing at the elite level, coaching, costumes, entrance fees.  Most families have to make a lot of sacrifices in order to afford that.  Nancy Kerrigan's family was decided middle class: mother was a homemaker, father was a welder who had to work three jobs to afford it.  Nancy herself was never talked about as "America's Sweetheart" until after the attack when it made for a juicy news angle.  To the contrary, she was fairly mundane.  She was that skater who could never quite get to the top.  There was always someone better, someone flashier, someone prettier, someone more athletic.

Tonya was a great athlete but still today she refuses to accept responsibility for the many failures in her life.  It's always someone else's fault.  After a lifetime of that, maybe you need to look a little close to home to find the problem.  Yes, she came from a bad background but you're never going to grow out of it if you can't even be honest with yourself.