Long before former figure skater Tonya Harding was found guilty of hindering prosecution for the infamous 1994 attack of her competitor Nancy Kerrigan, she had plotted sick schemes to damage the careers of her other competitors, including Olympian Kristi Yamaguchi, her former best friend claimed to RadarOnline.com.
Jenna Halase, of Portland, Oregon, claims to have met Harding when she transferred to Milwaukie High School at the age of 14. There, Harding befriended the newbie and the two were ultimately “inseparable” for years.
Halase and Harding were so close that the skater’s best friend practically lived with the Hardings for weeks on end during their high school days. This meant Halase would often get a front row seat at Harding’s skating practices. “She practiced every day,” said Halase. “There was no one who trained as hard as her.”
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As “fascinated” as Halase was by Harding’s dedication, she claims to have witnessed multiple conversations with Harding where the former skater not only plotted against her competitors but even went as far as carrying out her dirty schemes.
“She would tell me the things that she did,” Halase claimed to Radar. “How this skater would piss her off so she put scotch tape on her skate blades so she’d go off track.”
“She did it as a kid,” Halase further claimed. "She would literally stop at nothing to be in first place."
The Oregon resident added: “The way she would talk about other skaters was just crazy.”
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“Her mom [Lovana] would say, ‘Oh I wish Kristi Yamaguchi would fall and break her leg,’ and Tonya would say, ‘We can make that happen.’”
Halase said it wasn’t the first time she heard Harding plot against her competitors.
“She said things like that before, like, ‘Oh, I hate Kristi. I hope she breaks her leg.’”
What’s more is the final conversation Halase claims she had witnessed between Harding and her then-boyfriend, Jeff Gillooly in 1990. At the time, Halase claimed Harding had slowed down her practice schedule.
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“We were sitting around the table and she was complaining that she wasn’t going to make it in time for Nationals,” Halase alleged. “I thought at the time they were just talking crap, like, ‘I bet it would be really easy to make this person have a car accident. I could just mess with her brake lines and then they’d be out of the competition.’”
“They didn’t specify names then, but they did make comments like that when they were drunk,” Halase continued.
Halase explained to Radar that at the time she mistaken her “outspoken” best friend’s threats as “Tonya just being Tonya.”
Halase told Radar she slowly distanced herself from the figure skater and stopped being her friend just “months” before the 1994 incident with Kerrigan.
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Today, Halase told Radar she has not heard “anything at all” from her former friend since they parted ways. However, Halase stressed she wanted the world to know the truth about Tonya.
“Stop showing her empathy,” Halase said. “I want people to really know the truth and that this is the real Tonya.”
A rep for Harding did not respond to Radar’s calls for comment.
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