Former Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding is best known for hiring a thug in 1994 to take down one of her opponents, Nancy Kerrigan, by striking her in the knee during practice for the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. She went on to win the U.S. Championship, but was subsequently stripped of her title by the US Figure Skating Association, which banned her for life from all events and from being certified as a skating coach. She did participate in the Olympics at Lillehammer that year, placing eighth while Kerrigan won the silver medal behind fellow troubled skater, Oksana Baiul.

Harding went on to a mixed career as a boxer, starting out by whomping Bill Clinton’s sexual harassment accuser Paula Jones on the Fox Celebrity Boxing show in 2002. She was not as successful in her brief subsequent career as a professional boxer, and abandoned her ambitions in June, 2004 after getting beaten and booed in a match in Alberta, Canada by boxer Amy Johnson.

There’s a sex tape between Harding and her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, on their wedding night in 1990. I watched it for research purposes back when it came out and she sure had some athletic sex. It is thought that Gillooly sold the tape to get back at Harding for implicating him in the plot to whack Nancy Kerrigan’s knee. [All details from Wikipedia]

Now she’s back in the news briefly for having made a call to 911 on March 11th claiming that people were trying to steal her car and were hiding guns on her property.

At first she called 911 from a Vancouver, Washington tow truck company near her house. Somehow she convinced the tow truck driver to give her a ride, and that’s where police were called to the scene. That call was just released to the public and I was surprised how normal-sounding she is. I was hoping for some more obvious paranoia from Tonya. Although her tale is outrageous, she’s speaking normally and doesn’t sound agitated enough to make it interesting.

Harding points out her broken skate lace at the 1994 Winter Olympics.

The incident, which did not generate an official police report, was outlined in a Clark County sheriff’s dispatch log detailing two separate calls relating to Harding’s erratic behavior early Sunday.

The log did not indicate that Harding was on any medication, Sgt. Tim Bieber said Thursday.

“I don’t know from the call whether she was hallucinating,” he said, noting that if that had been the case, deputies typically take people to the hospital involuntarily.

“There’s no indication in the log that she was on any medication,” he added.

Harding called authorities around 4:50 a.m. Sunday from Yacolt Towing to report that there were possibly four men and a woman trying to break into her residence northeast of Vancouver, Bieber said. She also said they were trying to stash weapons on her property.

It’s unclear how Harding got to the towing company, although notes in the call log indicate a tow truck driver had given her a ride, Bieber said

“She was thinking the suspects followed her and the tow truck driver” to the business, he said.

A person answering the phone at Yacolt Towing would not comment Thursday.

Deputies arrived within a half hour, Bieber said, reading from dispatch notes that said the report appeared to be very implausible.

“It says she was agitated, glancing everywhere. She seemed frustrated that people can’t see the people that she sees,” Bieber said.

Then she ended up at her friend’s house, who placed another call to 911 saying she was “tweaking out, seeing things.” Tonya’s rep says she was on no illegal drugs and chalks it up to a new over the counter asthma medication she was on.

She has a long history of paranoid calls to police involving far-out scenarios though, and this type of thing seems all too common for the fallen figure skater.

On May 25, 1995, it was reported that Harding claimed she was being stalked by professional golfers driving a white Lincoln Town Car, resulting in a car chase involving Harding, her ex-husband Gillooly, and the police.

On February 12, 1997, Harding claimed that she was abducted at knife-point outside her home by a bushy-haired man who forced her to drive to a rural area, where she rammed her truck into a tree and escaped by running into the woods. Police found no evidence of an abduction. This incident happened on the opening weekend of the 1997 U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

On October 16, 1997, Harding reported that her truck had been stolen from a shopping mall parking lot.

On January 6, 2000, six years to the day after the attack on Kerrigan, Harding was in the news again after she lost control of her truck on an icy road and landed in a ditch. She and a male companion then allegedly made threats against a press photographer.

On February 24, 2000, Harding was ordered by a Clark County judge to stay away from alcohol and her former boyfriend, Darren Silver, after being booked on fourth-degree Domestic Violence assault charges for punching Silver and throwing a hubcap at him at their Camas, Washington residence. Harding was also sentenced to 3 days in jail and 10 days of community service on a work crew. Shortly before this, Harding had been attempting to make a comeback as a professional skater, but the hubcap incident effectively put an end to her skating career.

On April 20, 2002, Harding was involved in another accident with her truck. She was cited for drunk driving and a violation of her probation agreement from her 2000 conviction.

On October 23, 2005, Harding, apparently again under the influence of alcohol, was involved in a fight at her home in Vancouver, Washington with Christopher Nolan, a man she described as her boyfriend. Initially, she made a 911 call claiming to have been assaulted in her home by two masked men. For his part, Nolan claimed that Harding attacked him after having too much to drink. In the end, Nolan was charged with assault and ordered to stay away from Harding and to avoid alcohol.

What’s an asthma-suffering girl to do after a failed skating and boxing career? She’s way out of shape at this point. Maybe she can be the new Trimspa spokesperson now that Anna Nicole has passed. They seem to have relaxed standards and would probably welcome the notoriety. I’m sure she could figure out a quicker way to lose weight than popping those horse pills.