On January 6, 1994, Nancy Kerrigan, a top U.S. figure skater, was struck on the right knee by a blunt object as she left a practice session at the Cobo Arena in Detroit. The attack occurred the day before the U.S. Figure Skating Championships and left Kerrigan in pain and briefly under medical care; she subsequently recovered enough to compete at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Law enforcement quickly opened a criminal investigation. Within days, attention focused on individuals associated with fellow U.S. skater Tonya Harding. Police arrested Shane Stant, who admitted to carrying out the assault, and his accomplice, Derrick Smith. Investigation revealed that the plot had been financed and organized by Jeff Gillooly (then Tonya Harding’s ex-husband) and Shawn Eckardt, a security consultant who had ties to Harding’s circle. Gillooly later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to assault Kerrigan and received a sentence that included jail time and probation; Stant also pleaded guilty to assault and received prison time. Smith pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. Tonya Harding’s level of knowledge or involvement beyond associations with the conspirators became the central legal and sporting question. In June 1994, Harding pleaded guilty to conspiring to hinder the prosecution; she agreed to a three-year probation, community service, and a fine. The plea and evidence also led the U.S. Figure Skating Association to conduct its own disciplinary proceedings. In 1994 the association stripped Harding of her 1994 U.S. Championship title and banned her for life from participating in U.S. Figure Skating events. The incident had wide-ranging effects on the sport, public perceptions of its athletes, and media coverage of figure skating. Kerrigan became a sympathetic public figure and represented the United States at the 1994 Winter Olympics, winning the silver medal. Harding’s skating career in elite amateur competition effectively ended; she remained a controversial figure in popular culture and in subsequent retrospectives about the case. Legal consequences for the direct perpetrators—Stant and Smith—and for conspirators like Gillooly were clear, while debates persisted about the extent of Harding’s involvement and culpability. The Kerrigan attack remains one of the most notorious episodes in U.S. sports history, notable for its combination of criminal conduct, media attention, and institutional discipline. Reporting at the time relied on police records, court filings, and contemporaneous interviews; later accounts and documentaries revisited the case, sometimes offering differing interpretations about motive and responsibility. Where factual matters are disputed—particularly the precise degree of Harding’s prior knowledge of the plot—court records (guilty pleas, sentencing documents) provide the most reliable public record of legal outcomes.