THE ICE QUEENS

'I THINK we should break your legs and end your career.' The words belong to Jeff Gillooly, the 'mastermind' behind the bizarre plot to cripple American ice queen Nancy Kerrigan before the US national figure skating championships - but he was not speaking to Kerrigan.

That statement was made long before Gillooly hatched the clumsy, half-baked scheme to attack Kerrigan and thus help his wife and meal-ticket, Tonya Harding, win the championships and seek fame and fortune at the Olympic Games.

Gillooly made the statement in 1991. He was talking to Harding. They were arguing, as they frequently did, during their stormy, on-again off-again marriage. Police records indicate he made the threat while disputing possession of a pick-up truck the couplehad owned. He could not have imagined how those words would come back to haunt him.

Today, Gillooly and three accomplices face sentences of up to 10 years in jail for the conspiracy to assault Kerrigan on January 6. Harding, herself still under investigation, has dumped Gillooly, again, perhaps for the final time.

Breaking legs, it seems, is Jeff Gillooly's way. But when he hired a pack of goons to cripple Kerrigan, the elegant, hauntingly beautiful darling of the US skate set, Gillooly had much, much, more than a pick-up truck on his mind. A one-time production line worker at an Oregon warehouse, Gillooly saw in Harding his ticket away from the life of mediocrity and poverty in Portland. Get rid of Kerrigan, he thought, and his wife would cash in on the millions in endorsements Kerrigan enjoyed as the darling of theice.

While Harding is yet to be officially implicated in the shocking scheme, a statement she made to reporters just a day after winning the national championships may have been a telling Freudian slip.