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Katarina Witt is a German figure skater, in Germany commonly affectionately called Kati Witt. Witt won two Olympic Gold Medals for East Germany, first in the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics and the second in 1988 at the Calgary Olympics. She won the World championships in 1984, 1985, 1987, and 1988. She also won six European championships (1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988). Her competitive record makes her one of the most successful figure skaters of all time.
Witt was born on December 3, 1965 in Staaken (then in East Germany just outside of West Berlin, today part of Berlin).
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She went to school in Karl-Marx-Stadt (which today has reverted to its pre-Communist name, Chemnitz). There she attended a special school for sports-talented children, named Kinder- und Jugendsportschule. She represented the club SC Karl-Marx-Stadt for the GDR (East Germany). Her coach was Jutta Müller since 1970.
In 1984 Katarina Witt was voted as “The GDR female athlete of the year” by the readers of the East-German newspaper Junge Welt.
In 1987 she recaptured the World Championship title, which she had lost the previous year to Debi Thomas. Many people consider her performance at this event to be the finest of her career.
In 1988 Witt started a professional career, which was very unusual for East German athletes. At first she spent three years on tour in the United States with Brian Boitano, also a Gold Medal winner at the Winter Olympics in figure skating. 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. Later she continued at Holiday on Ice in the USA and in Western Europe.
She also became an actress in the film Carmen on Ice (1989), which expanded upon her Gold Medal freestyle routine at Calgary. In 1990, she received an Emmy Award for her role in this film.
In 1994 she had a comeback to the competitive skating scene. She was again coached by Jutta Müller and qualified for the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, where she came in 7th place. Much noted was her free program to the music “Sag mir wo die Blumen sind”, considered remarkable for its artistic impression, including a peace message for the people of Sarajavo (the site of her first Olympic victory). She received the Golden Camera for her Olympic comeback. In the same year she published her autobiography Meine Jahre zwischen Pflicht und Kür (My Years between Compulsaries and Freestyle).
In 1995 she was admitted to the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame.
On the cover of Playboy, December 1998In 1998 Katarina Witt posed nude for Playboy Magazine. The issue in which these photos were published was the second sold out issue of this magazine. The first sold out issue included photos of Marilyn Monroe. Many were surprised by the inclusion of full-frontal nudity in the Witt pictorial. Also in 1998, Witt appeared in the movie Ronin with a small supporting role and several lines of script. Around this time, she also played a villain in an episode of the tongue-in-cheek television series, V.I.P..
In 1999 she was voted as "Most Favourite Female Athlete in the United States". In the same year she was also voted as the "Most favourite Female Skater of the Century".
Witt has been known for her beauty and sex appeal as well as for her athleticism. Time magazine called her “the most beautiful face of socialism”. At the peak of her career, she was thought by some to resemble Brooke Shields, both of whom were in their late teens / early 20s at the time.
Witt's taste in figure skating costumes sometimes raised eyebrows. At the 1983 European championships she skated her Mozart short program in knee breeches instead of a skirt. Her blue skirtless feather-trimmed 1988 costume for a showgirl-themed short program was considered too theatrical and sexy, and led to a change in the ISU regulations which required female skaters to wear more modest clothing with skirts. In 1994, skating a Robin Hood-themed program, she again pushed the boundaries of the costume regulations by wearing not a skirt but a short tunic over leggings.
In November of 2005 she published her latest book, Only with Passion, in which she offers advice to a fictional young skater based on her many years of skating.
Profile:
Olympic Games
1984 – 1. Place
1988 – 1. Place
1994 – 7. Place
World Championships
1980 – 10. Place
1981 – 5. Place
1982 – 2. Place
1983 – 4. Place
1984 – 1. Place
1985 – 1. Place
1986 – 2. Place
1987 – 1. Place
1988 – 1. Place
European Championships
1979 – 14. Place
1980 – 13. Place
1981 – 5. Place
1982 – 2. Place
1983 – 1. Place
1984 – 1. Place
1985 – 1. Place
1986 – 1. Place
1987 – 1. Place
1988 – 1. Place
1994 – 8. Place
GDR-Championships (Nationals)
1979 – 3. Place
1980 – 2. Place
1981 – 1. Place
1982 – 1. Place
1983 – 1. Place
1984 – 1. Place
1985 – 1. Place
1986 – 1. Place
1987 – 1. Place
1988 – 1. Place
German National Championships (after reunification)
1994 – 2. Place |
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KATARINA WITT PICTURES |
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