People: Harding fails to cut much ice in court

HER ice-skating career was in ruins and her bank account was dollars 160,000 (pounds 107,000) lighter, but Tonya Harding managed a smile in Judge Donald Londer's courtroom. The Oregon judge, in ascertaining that Harding was voluntarily and knowledgably pleading guilty on Wednesday to conspiracy to hinder prosecution in the attack on Nancy Kerrigan, asked her a series of personal questions.

He inquired about her age and education, then said: 'What kind of work or occupations have you followed in the past?' Harding smiled, perhaps thinking her judge was of the British 'Who are the Beatles?' school. But he quickly added: 'I know that you skate. Is there anything else . . . ?'

Harding told him she had been a sales clerk at a hardware store and an assistant manager of a restaurant.

'Have you ever been treated for any mental illness or to your knowledge do you suffer from any emotional or mental instability or disability at the present time?' he asked. After a pause, Harding replied, 'I don't know.'

WHAT SHE did know - and failed to tell the police - about the 6 January attack on Kerrigan, her skating rival, was Harding's undoing. While Harding still maintains that she did not know of the plot to whack Kerrigan's knee in advance, she did not come forward after learning that her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, and bodyguard, Shawn Eckhardt, and two other men were involved in the conspiracy. According to Harding's plea agreement, she, Gillooly and Eckhardt agreed, four days after the attack in Detroit, on what they would tell investigators. The attack knocked Kerrigan out of the US championships and Harding won the title.

Harding has escaped a jail term, but paid a high price. She has resigned from the US Figure Skating Association, thus excluding herself from recognised competition, and from the US team. She was fined dollars 100,000; ordered to contribute dollars 50,000 to the Special Olympics for handicapped people and to reimburse the local district attorney's office dollars 10,000 in costs. She also must perform 500 hours of community service.

The skater will now drop from public view as she begins a court-mandated period of counselling for what her lawyer said was a pattern of destructive personal relationships. 'I am committed to seeking professional help and turning my full attention to getting my personal life in order,' Harding said. 'This objective is more important than my figure skating.'

AVOIDING jail and doing 40 hours of community service, Mickey Rourke is sponsoring a boxing clinic for underprivileged children. The actor, a part-time boxer, was charged with resisting arrest in January after an altercation outside his Mickey's Club night spot in Miami Beach. Under a pre-trial programme for first offenders, Rourke will hold a boxing clinic under the auspices of the Miami Police Athletic League. After the clinic, two misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct will dropped and his criminal record expunged.

ROURKE loves boxing, but how would Harding take to wrestling? The All-Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling Organisation, one of four groups which put up teams in the women's league, says it is ready to offer Harding a contract for 200 million yen, nearly equal to Kerrigan's dollars 2m contract with Disney Corp. 'She was born to be a pro-wrestler,' Japanese tabloids quoted the organisation chairman, Takashi Matsunaga, as saying. 'She's physically fit and used to adverse circumstances.'

ONE ATHLETE was happy and in no trouble at all this week. Monica Seles, the Yugoslav-born tennis player, and her mother, Ester, became US citizens in Miami.

IN THE athletic world, drug tests are more common than in Georgian politics. But Eduard Shevardnadze voluntarily took a drug test this week, initiating a campaign to cleanse his government of illegal drug users. 'Government officials must be free of vices,' he said.

(Photograph omitted)