Ice 'n' sleazy

	It’s clear Tyson’s psychopathic tendencies will clear up once he meets his ideal woman – one who won’t press charges

That Torvill and Dean. They were great on the ice, but put them on the street and they were all over the place. That Harry Hill-ism sprung to mind while watching Moments That Shook Sport on Sky One. Shergar nabbed, Seles stabbed, Senna kebabed: they were all there. However, in such a compelling show, did the frozen spat between American icedancers Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan merit inclusion?

As a human-interest story, there have been few better. A gang of heavies who wanted Harding to triumph at the 1994 Winter Olympics at Lillehammer sabotaged rival Kerrigan’s chances at the Olympic trials using the most effective method: a severe beating. As ice-breakers go, it was a lulu.

But was it a moment that shook sport? It shook Kerrigan, no doubt about it. But this was Eastenders on ice, not quite a moment to transfix the watching world.

Widespread sympathy naturally went to Kerrigan, who was a graceful swan next to ugly duckling Harding. However, I sided with the Harding posse. She could have trained harder than Kerrigan to fulfil her dream; she could even have turned to drugs, like EPO or TGH; instead, she injected GBH. Absolutely brilliant!

Courting disaster

If Tonya added the titillation, Monica Seles added the terror. Movie-goers still get nightmares about that Psycho shower scene, but it’s well known that if you’re a young, naked woman taking a shower, you’re always at risk of running into a knife-wielding maniac. Surely, though, not on the tennis court.

There were echoes of the Harding-Kerrigan incident in the motivation behind psycho Guenther Parche as he plunged a knife into Seles’ back during a change-over at the Citizen Cup in Hamburg in 1993. The knife-wielding loon was obsessed with Seles’ bitter rival, Steffi Graf, and thought he could get Graf back to the top of the world rankings by icing Seles.

Sky wheeled on former world No. 1 Jim Courier to explain the impact of the Seles stabbing. ‘Female tennis players are the most visible athletes on the planet, so they’ll attract the kooks,’ said Courier, before adding with a look of sheer disbelief: ‘She got stabbed in the back… in her office.’ Come and visit the InsideEdge HQ, Jim. Such behaviour is commonplace.

There were two sinister footnotes to the Seles assault. First, madman Parche served not a single day in jail. Second, I’ve been stumped a million times by pub quizzes that ask the name of Seles’ opponent that day. I’m not telling you who it was, just in case you’re in the same quiz one day.

Here’s another question that will stump you: in what year were the fastest animal in the world and the fastest man in the world both cheetahs? The answer, of course, is 1988, when cheating sprinter Ben Johnson ran a world-record 9.79 seconds in the Olympic 100m final in Seoul. That time was shocking enough, but even more astonishing was what followed.

Within two days, it emerged that Johnson was more full of drugs than Kate Moss after a cocaine supper. We should have guessed as much. Bulging eyes that saw nothing, the look of a zombie, the faintest sign of breasts, the incoherent words – we all should have known Kate was a user.

Sporting chance?

The abiding memory of that race was the look of sheer disbelief hot favourite Carl Lewis flashed at Johnson as the Canadian drug fiend breasted the tape. It was a look surely matched by viewers of the Sky documentary when it became clear that, even now, Johnson feels no shame about his drug excesses.

‘I still run the time,’ he says defiantly. ‘I didn’t drive there, I didn’t fly there. I run it with two feet, from zero to 100 metres, and I’m very proud of what I did.’

I would dispute every syllable, particularly the bit about not flying there. Given the amount of illegal substances in Johnson’s body at the time, it was his only possible mode of travel.

A more sane conclusion was drawn by Olympic legend Michael Johnson: ‘We all know how it got done. It got done by using steroids. That’s like saying a guy done 9.6, but he did half of it on a skateboard.’

I won’t dwell on the segment detailing Mike Tyson’s ear-nibbling of Evander Holyfield. It’s clear Tyson’s psychopathic tendencies will clear up once he meets his ideal woman – one who won’t press charges.

More interesting by far was the section on the kidnapping of 1981 Derby winner Shergar. Kidnap a bloody racehorse? What was most alarming was that among the three racing journalists called in to negotiate Shergar’s release was none other than lovable buffoon Derek Thompson. I’m trying to work out the reason for DT’s involvement and can come up with only one explanation.

The kidnap gang, when asked for proof that they had Shergar bound and gagged and tied to a radiator, sent a horse’s ear. In retaliation Irish police sent in a horse’s ass.