Katarina witt biography

In , Katarina learned from her previous year's experience and earned second place in the individual program at the World Championships in Copenhagen, winning her first silver medal. Soon after, she was named Athlete of the Year by the magazine "Junge Welt. In , she clinched her second Olympic gold medal, once again triumphing in a closely contested battle against Debi Thomas.

Katarina's relentless pursuit of excellence was evident as she performed five consecutive triple jumps, refusing to simplify her routine. This iconic showdown came to be known as the "Battle of the Carmens. Throughout her career, Katarina Witt amassed a total of four gold medals at the World Figure Skating Championships and six European Championships titles.

She is also a welcome guest as motivational speaker at corporate events. Katarina Witt's biography and figure-skating career is incomparable and unique: in addition to two Olympic victories, she is a quadruple World Champion, six-time European Champion and eight-time National Champion. After the World Championships Katarina Witt ends her successful amateur career for the time being.

The show "Witt and Boitano Skating" is so successful that the Madison Square Garden in New York is sold out with a figure skating show for the first time in ten years. She then tours the US and Canada as star guest of the figure skating shows "Stars on Ice" and "Champions on Ice" for 10 years and also participates in countless international professional competitions.

She is the creative mind behind many of the international ice show productions which she conceptualises, creates, headlines and produces with her own production company, WITH WITT. She was also a four-time World Champion , and six-time European Champion After taking the Olympic, World and European titles she turned professional in Their rivalry was known as the " Battle of the Carmens ", as each woman had independently elected to skate her long program to music from Bizet's opera Carmen.

They held the top two spots after the compulsory figures and the short program. Witt was third in the compulsories, behind Ivanova and Thomas, before winning the short program with Thomas second. In her long program, Witt landed four triple jumps and downgraded her planned triple-loop jump to a double loop. This left room for Thomas to win the long program, but Thomas missed three of her five planned triple jumps.

Canadian skater Elizabeth Manley won the long program convincingly over Witt seven judges to two , however Witt retained her Olympic title based on her overall scores she had finished ahead of Manley in both the compulsory figures and the short program. Witt became only the second woman in figure skating history after Sonja Henie to defend her Olympic title successfully.

Had Manley not narrowly lost second place to Thomas in the short program by one judge , or Witt not narrowly held onto second place over Ito in the long program on a 6—3 split , Manley would have defeated Witt for the overall gold medal. To honour Witt and her win in Calgary, North Korea issued miniature sheets with three large pictures of Witt on the ice.

Witt won a fourth and final World title to end her amateur career at the World Championships in Budapest, Hungary. She turned in a relatively lackluster long program, popping out of both a planned triple loop and triple salchow, and below the quality of her Olympic performance, but with other top contenders also being mostly subpar and fatigued after the high of the Calgary Games, she won gold with a victory in compulsory figures just second win in figures in a World or Olympic event, only other instance was Worlds , 2nd place to Debi Thomas in the short program, and victory in the long program.

One of her rivals, silver medalist Elizabeth Manley, later complained about some of what she perceived to be dubious foul play in the event, including Witt's win in the figures where she overcame Manley's lead in the first two figures in the final loop figure, which Manley believed to be her best, and Manley's music not being played properly to start her short program where Manley had a combination miss and took only 4th place, ending her gold medal chances.

In , Witt started a professional career — rare for East German athletes. Their show, "Witt and Boitano Skating", was so successful that for the first time in ten years, New York's Madison Square Garden was sold out for an ice show. She also became an actress in the film Carmen on Ice , which expanded upon her gold-medal free program in Calgary.

In , she received an Emmy Award for her role in this film. As a professional she was never as successful competitively as an amateur, often placing last of four or five women in her appearances at the two biggest professional championships Challenge of Champions and World Professional Championships in Landover , but continued to receive great acclaim as an entertainer and show skater.

She was expected to be in a fierce three-person fight for only two spots on the German Olympic team with both young rising star Tanja Szewczenko and veteran Marina Kielmann , who was almost the same age as Witt. She finished second at the German Championships behind Szewczenko, but above Kielmann. Witt's first international competition for the reunified country of Germany , following eleven years competing for East Germany, was the European Championships , where she finished eighth, again behind Szewczenko who was fifth, but again ahead of Kielmann who was ninth.

She and Szewczenko thus gained the two available spots ahead of Kielmann for the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer , Norway, where she finished seventh. In a dramatic buildup, she would also draw last to skate, and get to close the show in her final Olympic skate, after the medalists had already been determined. Her free program to the music "Sag mir wo die Blumen sind" an arrangement of the Pete Seeger folksong " Where Have All the Flowers Gone " included a peace message for the people of Sarajevo, the site of her first Olympic victory.

While she had some technical problems, completing only three of her planned five triples, she delivered perhaps the most emotional and moving performance of the whole evening. She received the Golden Camera for her Olympic comeback. Witt's taste in figure-skating costumes sometimes caused debate.

Katarina witt biography

At the European Championships , she skated her Mozart short program in knee breeches instead of a skirt. Her blue, skirtless feather-trimmed costume for a showgirl-themed short program was considered too theatrical and sexy, and led to a change in the ISU regulations dubbed the "Katarina rule" which required female skaters to wear more modest clothing; skirts were required to cover the buttocks and crotch.

Her farewell from show skating tour took place in February and March Witt posed nude for Playboy magazine, and the pictures were published months later in the December issue, which was the second ever sold-out issue of the magazine. Witt said she did not care for the "cute, pretty, ice princess image" of figure skaters and wanted to "change people's perceptions".

In , Witt appeared in the film Ronin in a small supporting role with several lines of dialogue. Around this time, she also played a villain in an episode of the tongue-in-cheek television series, V. In November , Witt published a novel, Only with Passion , in which she offers advice to a fictional young skater based on her many years of skating.

She headed Munich's unsuccessful bid to host the Winter Olympics. In January , Witt appeared on German TV in her first leading role, playing a figure skater who is pursued by a stalker. The made-for-television movie The Stalker [ de ] thus has autobiographical elements, as Witt herself had been stalked in the United States 20 years earlier.

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