Witt, Katarina (1965-…), a German ice skater, was the star of the sport during the 1980’s. She won the women’s European figure skating championships six times, was women’s world champion four times, and was women’s Olympic champion twice.
Witt was born on Dec. 3, 1965, in what was then East Berlin in East Germany. Witt began ice skating when she was five years old. While still a child, she was recruited into the intensive training program run by the Karl-Marx-Stadt Sports Club and School. At the age of nine, Witt came under the care of the legendary East German skating coach Jutta Müller, who nurtured her obvious talent. At the age of 11, she executed her first triple-jump, a Salchow, in which the body rotates in the air. In 1980, at the age of 14, Witt came in 10th in the World Championship competition. Two years later, she won the East German women’s championship.
From then on, Witt’s career was meteoric. She won the European championship every year from 1983 to 1988. She also won the women’s world championship four times, in 1984, 1985, 1987, and 1988. She assured her place as an international sports star when she won two gold medals in successive Winter Olympic Games—in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia (now in Bosnia-Herzegovina), in 1984 and in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in 1988. Following her second Olympic win and her fourth world championship victory in 1988, Witt became a professional ice skater, dancing in ice shows and exhibitions. Although Witt’s compulsory figures were the weakest element in her competition programs, her free-style sections were considered imaginative, and she was known for her routines set to the music of the French composer Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen.
