Katarina Witt

1965-

German figure skater

Known as "Fire on the Ice," Katarina Witt emerged from the former East Germany to become the winningest figure skater since Norway's Sonja Henie . Witt made an enormous splash onto the international scene in the 1988 Olympic Games in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, where she took her first gold medal. Sexy and charming as well as technically astute and creatively expressive, she instantly became a media darling. All told, she earned two Olympic gold medals, four World Championship gold medals, and was European champion eight times.

Witt (pronounced "Vitt") was born December 3, 1965, in the city of Karl-Marx-Stadt, in the former East Germany, which is now known as Chimnitz, Germany. Her father, Manfred, managed an agriculture factory and her mother, Kathe, was a physical therapist. She has an older brother, Axel. Witt started kindergarten when she was five, and her walk to school took her past the Kuchwald ice arena. She became fascinated with watching the figure skaters, and soon insisted to her parents that she be allowed to join them. Every detail of Witt's first wobbly steps onto the ice would remain in her memory. "I made my way out to the middle of the ice and I remember thinking, 'This is for me,'" Witt is quoted as saying by author Evelyn B. Kelly in Katarina Witt.

Witt emerged as a natural talent, and was approached by an East German athlete training school. In former Communist nations like East Germany and the Soviet Union, promising athletes were hand-picked by the government, and then were provided training so that they would grow up to perform favorably for their country in competition. Standards for these programs were rigid, and once entry into a state school was gained, the training regimen was strict and demanding. Before a child was offered a place in a training program, every detail of her and her family's physical and behavioral nature was measured and calculated to determine their champion potential. A child who showed a tendency toward heaviness would not be allowed into the program, so Witt's parents were weighed and measured. Officials observed Witt during practice to determine her ability to resist signs of stress or nerves. Witt stood up to the testing with remarkable poise and was accepted into the sports school.

Gave Her Life to Skating

Skating took over Witt's life. She left for practice at seven in the morning and did not return home until dinnertime. When she was nine years old, Witt caught the attention of Jutta Mueller, East Germany's most successful skating coach. Mueller took over the girl's training, and Witt was soon spending more time with her coach than she did with her parents. In addition to perfecting her technical and athletic abilities, Mueller worked with Witt to develop her showmanship. Mueller drew out a sense of seductiveness in the skater, which made her an engaging performer. Witt learned how to maximize her natural beauty with makeup and glitzy costumes.

Witt executed her first triple salchow—a complicated leaping, rotating jump—when she was eleven years old and Mueller decided she was ready for competition. Headstrong Witt was weakest in the compulsories category, where skaters must complete simple but exact figure eights, circles, and loops on the ice to display their control. The young skater found herself much more suited to the free-skating programs, where skaters must perform a number of required moves, but do so to music and creative choreography. The score for each category is an average of the scores from nine judges, with 6.0 being the highest. Witt skated in her first European championship in 1979 at age 14 and placed tenth. The next year, she placed fifth. In 1982, she won both the short and long programs, and finished second overall.

Chronology

Witt entered her first Olympic competition in 1984 in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. She placed third in the compulsories. Witt was nonplussed by the cheering American crowd, and skated confidently onto the ice wearing a traditional Hungarian costume. Skating fans used to the stern and masculine character of most Eastern bloc athletes were not prepared for Witt's personality and charm. A virtually perfect performance gave her 5.8s and 5.9s among the judges in the long and short programs. American Rosalyn Sumners scored almost as well. The fight ended narrowly: Witt won the gold medal over Sumners by just one-tenth of a point on one judge's scorecard.

With Gold Came Celebrity

The eighteen-year-old East German skater became an instant celebrity, with a lot of attention paid to her sex appeal. Witt took it in stride, embracing the attention while training for the World Championships, which took place weeks after the Olympics. She even apologized publicly for not responding to each of the 35,000 fan letters she received after the Olympics, many of which included marriage proposals. Witt went on to win her first World gold medal in Ottawa, Canada, and repeated her gold success at the 1985 World Championships, in Tokyo, Japan. She also won the European Championships in 1984 and 1985.

Because Witt was such an accomplished athlete, and had become so because of her nation's Communist government, at no cost to her parents, she became a proud representative of the Communist system. In East Germany, she was known as "Katarina the Great." Unlike American or European skaters, skaters from Communist countries were indebted to their governments and were not allowed to perform publicly or accept endorsements that were not government approved. Communist athletes were even prohibited from traveling with their families to discourage defection. Witt's parents never saw her skate in competition.

Witt's Olympic and European and World Championship gold medals had firmly established her as the skater to beat. American skater Debi Thomas had placed fifth in Sarajevo, but took the 1986 World Championship from Witt. The upset began a determined rivalry between the two champions. It also stoked fires between East vs. West, Communism vs. Capitalism, among fans. Thomas was considered the better athlete, but Witt's showmanship, paired with her technical prowess, made it an even match. In a program choreographed to music from West Side Story, Witt regained her World Championship title from Thomas in March 1987.

The Witt-Thomas rivalry was a media focus of the 1988 Olympic Games in Calgary, Canada. Ironically, each skater had unknowingly chosen the same music, from the opera Carmen for her long program. Witt skated a conservative program forsaking several triple jumps for doubles, and focusing more on flirting with the audience, and did not receive exceptionally high marks. Thomas skated an incredibly ambitious program, but not well enough. A few technical mistakes made way for Witt take the gold once again. A few weeks later, at the World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, Witt regained the World gold from Thomas.

Held Back by Her Government

Witt came head-to-head with her beloved government in 1988, when she wanted to skate with the American Holiday on Ice tour. Only after months of pleading by Witt did the rigid bureaucracy allow her to accept the offer—under the condition that 80 percent of her $3.78 million contract be paid to the East German Sports Federation. She went through the same tiresome process to appear in Canvas of Ice in December 1988 and to film HBO's Carmen on Ice, which earned her an Emmy Award. She skated with friend and American skater Brian Boitano in both. The government wanted Witt to pursue her education, and revoked her travel privileges to discourage her aspirations abroad. Her government lost its hold on Witt in November 1989, when the Berlin Wall was brought down and Germany was reunited as one democratic nation. The collapse of her government left Witt free to perform as she liked, but she was practically reviled in her own country for having been so favored by the government.

Awards and Accomplishments

Where Is She Now?

Witt left competitive skating behind in 1994 to indulge her love for the audience, touring with Stars on Ice. She also indulged her love for American culture, buying an apartment in New York City, and becoming a fan of Madonna, blue jeans, and Michael Jordan. She took a break in 1995 to recover from back injuries, and received the Jim Thorpe Pro Sports Award for outstanding performances and efforts in the Olympics. She also was inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She was nominated for another Emmy Award for The Ice Princess in 1996. Witt's star turn off the ice also included several cameo roles in Hollywood productions. She appeared in the hit features Jerry Maguire with Tom Cruise in 1996 and Ronin with Robert DeNiro in 1998. She appeared on television in Frasier in 1993 and Everybody Loves Raymond in 1996. She played herself on TV's Arliss in 1997 and 1998, and appeared as "Greta Krantz" in 1998 on V.I.P alongside Pamela Anderson. A multi-year contract with Germany's ARD put Witt in front of the cameras as a commentator for international skating. She also launched a sports marketing and promotion company called With Witt. The 1998 Playboy magazine she appeared in was a huge seller.

Witt quickly adapted to freedom. She toured North America in Katarina Witt & Brian Boitano—Skating in 1990. She appeared off the ice during the 1992 Olympics in Albertville, France, as a commentator for CBS-TV. In 1993, she covered the World Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia, for NBC-TV.

Witt decided in 1993 to begin training for the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. Many scoffed at the decision; at age 28, she was almost twice as old as her competitors. An eighth-place finish at the European Championships did not bode well for her Olympic chances, and was a blow to her confidence. Witt dedicated her 1994 Olympic performance of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" to war-torn Sarajevo, where she had won her first gold a decade earlier. The performance also marked the first time her parents had ever seen her skate. Though she finished seventh, the performance was as important to Witt as any that had earned her the gold.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Address: Katarina Witt, c/o Parenteau Guidance, Gail Parenteau, 132 East 35th St., Ste. 3J, New York, NY 10016.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Books

Kelly, Evelyn. Katarina Witt. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1999.

Smith, Pohla. Superstars of Women's Figure Skating. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1997.

Other

Katarina Witt Official Web site. http://www.katarina-witt.com (January 15, 2003).

"Katarina Witt," Skating Source. http://www.skatingsource.com/witt.shtml (January 15, 2003).

Sketch by Brenna Sanchez