Tonya Harding - Early Life

Early Life

Harding was born in Portland, Oregon, the daughter of LaVona and Al Harding. She had a half-brother, Chris Davison (deceased). Her father had health problems that sometimes made him unable to work. She claims that her mother sexually abused her, a claim her mother denies. She began skating at an early age. She landed her first triple lutz at age 12. Her mother made many of her skating costumes.

She stopped attending high school during her sophomore year and later earned a GED as she started receiving invitations to international skating competitions while she was still in junior high school.

Read more about this topic:  Tonya Harding

Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:

    Early education can only promise to help make the third and fourth and fifth years of life good ones. It cannot insure without fail that any tomorrow will be successful. Nothing “fixes” a child for life, no matter what happens next. But exciting, pleasing early experiences are seldom sloughed off. They go with the child, on into first grade, on into the child’s long life ahead.
    James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)

    The sensation of seeing extremely fine women, with superb forms, perfectly unconscious of undress, and yet evidently aware of their beauty and dignity, is worth a week’s seasickness to experience.... To me the effect [of a Siva dance] was that of a dozen Rembrandts intensified into the most glowing beauty of life and motion.
    Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)