00:00She was the reigning US champion and a favorite for Olympic gold.
00:03But after completing a practice session for the national championships,
00:06as she walked off the ice and into a dark hallway,
00:09a loud thump echoed through the corridors and a haunting scream rang out through the arena.
00:16Nancy Kerrigan had been assaulted with a single brutal hit just above her right knee,
00:21only a few weeks before the Olympics.
00:25The man who assaulted her disappeared immediately,
00:27smashing head first through a glass door onto the footpath outside,
00:31and then jumping into a getaway car with stolen plates.
00:34But as the FBI started investigating,
00:36pretty quickly they received a tip about a potential suspect,
00:40and the FBI was surprised to find out he was apparently one of their own.
00:44When Sean Eckhart came in for questioning,
00:46even the investigators had to admit his resume was impressive.
00:49Sean was a counter-terrorism expert, a hostage negotiator,
00:53and boasted working for some of the most elite intelligence agencies around the world,
00:57including both the CIA and FBI.
01:00But most interestingly, he was currently working as Tonya Harding's bodyguard.
01:04At the time, Tonya Harding was one of the greatest figure skaters in America.
01:08She'd won the 1991 figure skating championships with one of the hardest jumps in the sport,
01:13a triple axel.
01:14Although she'd missed out on gold at the 92 championships when she was outperformed by Nancy Kerrigan.
01:19So when the FBI received the tip, they brought Sean in for questioning.
01:23But they knew with his experience, he wasn't going to give up information easily.
01:27And as they sat across from him, staring him in the eyes, he did something that they weren't expecting.
01:32He broke down into tears and basically told them everything.
01:36See, as it turns out, all that stuff about Sean being an elite intelligence asset was all
01:41bullshit.
01:42In the real world, Sean was an overweight, delusional liar still living in his parents' house
01:46who had been spending the past week telling everybody in the paralegal course that he was
01:50studying that he had been the one who organised the hit on Nancy Kerrigan.
01:54And oddly enough, that was actually the one thing that he wasn't lying about.
01:59Sean was indeed Tonya Harding's bodyguard.
02:02Tonya and her husband Jeff had apparently hired him after Tonya received an anonymous death threat.
02:07At the time, Tonya and Jeff were struggling for money.
02:09But they knew that if they could get Tonya a medal at the 94 Lillehammer Olympics,
02:14the lucrative sponsorship offers would start rolling in.
02:17However, the US only had two spots available for the women's figure skating Olympic team.
02:22Tonya was good enough to secure one of those spots, but she and Jeff didn't want to take any chances.
02:28So Jeff asked Sean to organise the hit on Nancy Kerrigan, right before the 94 US Nationals.
02:34Tonya went on to win the Nationals, securing her spot in the Olympic team.
02:38But despite the attack, Nancy recovered just in time for the Games.
02:42And she was offered the other spot.
02:44Nancy went on to get the silver medal, while Tonya had a meltdown, ended up in 8th place,
02:49and when she was later convicted for her connection to the attack,
02:52she was shunned from the figure skating world.
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