People_USA_April_24_2017

T

hese days Nancy Kerrigan is pushing

through the pain. “My back hurts

from herniated discs, and when I

take the heels off, I can’t even flatten

my feet,” says the two-time Olympic

medalist in figure skating—who’s now

competing onDancing with the Stars.

Not that she’s any stranger to physi-

cal discomfort. Sitting at the kitchen

table in her Boston-area home, Ker-

rigan, 47, confides that training as a

competitive skater means “you fall

and get up and fall and get up a million times a

day. You learn a lot about yourself. And eventually

you don’t fall!”

Kerrigan has had her share of ups and downs

off the ice as well. There was the infamous hit

she took to her knee—an attack orchestrated by

skating rival Tonya Harding ’s ex-husband—just

weeks before the 1994 Olympics. There was the

anorexia she suffered after the attack, and the

horror of her father’s 2010 death after a trau-

matic altercation with his son, Nancy’s brother

Mark (see box). And there was a more private

anguish, one she opened up about on the April 10

episode ofDWTS: She suffered a “devastating ”

series of “at least” six miscarriages between the

birth of her oldest son, Matthew, now 20, and his

siblings Brian, 12, and Nicole, 8, with husband

Jerry Solomon. “I’ve been through a lot,” says

Kerrigan, adding that, for the most part, “it’s

been totally worth it.”

From the time she was a child growing up

in Stoneham, Mass., where she climbed

trees and played street hockey with

her brothers, Kerrigan longed to

be a mom. “I always thought I’d

have three kids by the time I

Now thriving onDancing with the

Stars,the figure-skating icon famously

attacked before the ’94 Olympics

opens up about more pain: her anorexia

and years of fertility struggles

ByPATRICK GOMEZ

SURVIVING SCANDAL

& TRAGEDY

Nancy Kerrigan

70 April 24, 2017 PEOPLE

WatchPeople Features: Nancy Kerrigan,

available now on the newPeople/

Entertainment Weekly Network (PEN).

Go to people.com/PEN, or download the

PEN app on your favorite device.

PHOTOGRAPH BY BRIAN DOBEN