So excited for you @NancyAKerrigan ! Can't wait to see you grace that ballroom floor, break a leg! #DWTS
— Kristi Yamaguchi (@kristiyamaguchi) March 20, 2017
Legendary figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi meant well when she wished Nancy Kerrigan good luck on this season’s Dancing With the Stars, it just didn’t come out that way.
If Yamaguchi said this to most other people, this tweet would be harmless and good-natured but because it was directed at Kerrigan, this sounds more like a subtweet. We’re sure Yamaguchi is aware that Tonya Harding injured Nancy Kerrigan’s leg in 1994 which caused Kerrigan to miss the U.S. Championships. Surely, Yamaguchi remembers Kerrigan screaming “why, why why?” It’s one of the moments that defined sports in the 1990s.
The more plausible reason why Yamaguchi tweeted this without thinking of the 1994 incident is that she was previously on Dancing With the Stars. She just wanted to congratulate Kerrigan on being part of the DWTS family. Still, yeesh.