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Skaters

Katarina Witt

Born:

December 3, 1965

Birthplace:

Staaken

Hometown:

Berlin,

Club:

SC Karl-Marx-Stadt

Coach:

Jutta Mueller

At the age of five and a half, Katarina Witt first stepped onto the ice in her home town of Chemnitz (formerly Karl-Marx-Stadt), East Germany. Her competitive figure skating career started only a short time later, when, on her seventh birthday, she won first place in her very first competition. Feeling the gaze of the judges and audience upon her, she was hooked - and the true performer in her began to blossom. Over the course of her skating career Katarina has developed a winning combination: The passionate dedication to the perfection of her sport and the bewitching ability to charm an audience. With this famous blend charismatic appeal, artistry and athletic prowess, Katarina has captured more figure skating titles than anyone else in the history of the sport.

Committed to the life of a competitive skater, as a child Katarina trained daily to perfect her sport, sacrificing all but an occasional piece of chocolate nibbled behind the back of her coach, Frau Mueller, who she has been working with since the age of nine. Her passion and hard work led her from securing her first of 6 European titles in 1983 to the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, where she won her first Olympic Gold medal. Inspired by the sweet taste of success, Katarina continued competitive training behind the iron curtain, all the while dominating the world of figure skating for the next five years. In 1988 she returned to the Olympic Games to win the second Gold for her performance of Carmen. With this success, Katarina became the only figure skater since Sonja Henie (1932 and 1936) to retain an Olympic title. As was promised by the East German Government, after winning her second Gold for the country, she was the first athlete of her country permitted to turn professional - and so began her career as a pro figure skater.

In 1994, however, under a unique concession made to recently turned pro athletes by the International Skating Union (ISU), Katarina was permitted to return to compete in the Olympic Games of Lillehammer. Taking this opportunity to perform again on the world stage, she decided to send a message to remind people about the terrible civil war raging in Sarajevo, where she had won her first Olympic Medal only ten years before. Dressed in a dramatic, blood-red dress, Katarina performed an emotional piece to Peter Seeger's song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone", specially arranged by the internationally renowned conductor Kurt Mazur.