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Katarina Witt
Witt in 2009
Personal information
Country represented	East Germany (1977–1988)  Germany (1994)
Born	(1965-12-03) 3 December 1965 (age 46)
Height	166 cm (5 ft 5 in)
Former coach	Jutta Müller
Skating club	SC Karl-Marx-Stadt
Retired	1988 and 1994
Medal record Olympic medal record Competitor for  East Germany Ladies' figure skating Olympic Games Gold 1984 Sarajevo Ladies' singles Gold 1988 Calgary Ladies' singles World Championships Gold 1984 Budapest Ladies' singles Gold 1985 Tokyo Ladies' singles Gold 1987 Cincinnati Ladies' singles Gold 1988 Budapest Ladies' singles Silver 1982 Copenhagen Ladies' singles Silver 1986 Geneva Ladies' singles European Championships Gold 1983 Dortmund Ladies' singles Gold 1984 Budapest Ladies' singles Gold 1985 Gothenburg Ladies' singles Gold 1986 Copenhagen Ladies' singles Gold 1987 Sarajevo Ladies' singles Gold 1988 Prague Ladies' singles Silver 1982 Lyon Ladies' singles

Katarina Witt (born 3 December 1965) is a German figure skater and model. In Germany she was commonly called "Kati" in the past, but today her full name is used more often.

She 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 four times (in 1984, 1985, 1987 and 1988), and six consecutive European Championships (1983–1988). She won silver medals at both the 1982 and 1986 World Figure Skating Championships. Her competitive record makes her one of the most successful figure skaters of all time.

Life and career[link]

Katarina Witt, 1982

Witt was born in Staaken in East Germany, just outside of West Berlin, which is today part of Berlin. Her mother worked in a hospital as a physiotherapist and her father was a farmer.^[1] She went to school in Karl-Marx-Stadt (which today has reverted to its pre-war name of Chemnitz). There she attended Kinder- und Jugendsportschule, a special school for athletically talented children. She represented the club SC Karl-Marx-Stadt for the GDR (East Germany). Jutta Müller began coaching her in 1977. Witt trained six days a week,^[1] sometimes for seven hours a day with three hours spent on compulsory figures.^[2]

In 1984, Witt was voted "GDR female athlete of the year" by the readers of the East German newspaper Junge Welt. She narrowly won the 1984 Olympic title over the favoured contender, reigning World champion Rosalynn Sumners of the United States. Witt and Sumners held the top two spots heading into the Olympic free skate, which were worth 50% of the total score. Witt landed three triple jumps in her free skate program, and the judges left room for Sumners to win the event, but Sumners scaled back two of her jumps, and Witt won the long program by one tenth of a point on one judge's scorecard.

In 1987, Witt recaptured the World Championship title, which she had lost the previous year to Debi Thomas. Witt only finished fifth in compulsory figures, which meant that Thomas could finish second in both the short and long programs and still retain the world title. However, a costly error by Thomas in the short program put the two skaters on a level playing field heading into the free skate. Witt skated the strongest long program of her career, landing five triple jumps, including a triple loop jump. Although Thomas also skated a strong long program, Witt was ranked first by the majority of the nine judges and thus reclaimed the world title.

In 1988, Witt won her sixth consecutive European Championship, equalling the achievement of Sonja Henie as the most successful Ladies Skater at the European Championships. While Witt's and Henie's number of European titles have been surpassed since by Irina Slutskaya, she retains the record of most consecutive European titles, sharing it with Henie.

Both Witt and Thomas were favoured contenders in the 1988 Olympic Games. 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 skated her long program well, but not spectacularly, landing four triple jumps and downgrading her planned triple loop jump to a double loop. This left room for Thomas to win the long program, but Thomas skated poorly, missing three of her planned five triple jumps. Canadian skater Elizabeth Manley won the long program, but 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. To honour her and her win in Calgary North Korea issued miniature sheets with three large pictures of Witt on the ice.^[3]

Witt is known for her beauty and sex appeal as well as for her athleticism. Time magazine called her "the most beautiful face of socialism."^[1]

After competing[link]

In 1988, Witt started a professional career, which was unusual for East German athletes. She spent three years on tour in the United States with Brian Boitano, also a gold medalist 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 United States and in Western Europe.

Katarina Witt at Geneva world championship (1986)

At the 1988 Calgary Olympics

Following the dissolution of East Germany, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Stasi) files were found to show that the secret police had worked hard to keep Witt from defecting by giving her cars, accommodations, and permitted travel.^[4] Witt found 3,000 pages on her life from the age of eight.^[2]

She also became an actress in the film Carmen on Ice (1989), which expanded upon her gold medal free program in Calgary. In 1990, she received an Emmy Award for her role in this film.

In 1994, she made a comeback to the competitive skating scene. She was again coached by Jutta Müller and qualified for the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, where she finished 7th. This was Witt's first international competition for the reunified country of Germany, following 11 years competing for East Germany. Much-noted was her free programme to the music “Sag mir wo die Blumen sind” (an arrangement of the Pete Seeger folksong "Where Have All the Flowers Gone"), considered remarkable for its artistic impression, including a peace message for the people of Sarajevo (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 Compulsories and Freestyle).

In 1995, she was inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame.

In 1996, she had a cameo role in the movie Jerry Maguire. She also starred in a German-language movie called Princess on Ice. Witt provided the vocals for the theme song, "Skate With Me".

Witt appeared as herself in two episodes of the TV comedy series Arli$$ that aired in 1997 and 1998.

In December 1998, Witt posed nude for Playboy magazine. The issue in which these photos were published was the second ever sold-out issue of the magazine.^[5] (The first sold-out issue was the inaugural one including photos of Marilyn Monroe.) Witt said she did not care for the "cute, pretty, ice princess image" of figure skaters and wanted to "change people's perceptions."^[1] In 1998 Witt also 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.

Witt's taste in figure skating costumes sometimes raised eyebrows. At the 1983 European championships she skated her Mozart short programme in knee breeches instead of a skirt. Her blue skirtless feather-trimmed 1988 costume for a showgirl-themed short programme was considered^[who?] too theatrical and sexy, and led to a change in the ISU regulations which required female skaters to wear more modest clothing, including skirts. In 1994, skating a Robin Hood-themed programme, she again pushed the boundaries of costume regulations by wearing a short tunic over leggings.

In November 2005, she published a novel, Only with Passion, in which she offers advice to a fictional young skater based on her many years of skating. Since October 2006, she has her own TV show at the German station ProSieben Stars auf Eis (Stars on Ice).

On 7 July 2007, Witt was a compere at the German segment of Live Earth.

Witt was invited to Istanbul as an honoured guest for the skating competition TV show called Buzda Dans (Dance on Ice). The competition took place on 25 February 2007.

Her farewell tour^{[clarification needed]} took place in February and March 2008.

Witt was the bid head for Munich's unsuccessful bid to host the Winter Olympics in 2018.^[6]

On 3 December 2011, Witt was confirmed as a judge on hit UK TV show, Dancing On Ice; she made her first appearance on 8 January 2012.^[7]

Results[link]

See also[link]

• List of Olympic medalists in figure skating

Bibliography[link]

• Beisteiner, Johanna: Art music in figure skating, synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics / Kunstmusik in Eiskunstlauf, Synchronschwimmen und rhythmischer Gymnastik. PhD thesis by Johanna Beisteiner, Vienna 2005, (German). The PhD thesis contains an extensive description and analysis of Carmen on Ice (Chapter II/2, pages 105-162). Article about the PhD thesis of Johanna Beisteiner in the catalogue of the Austrian Library Network. 2005. (German and English)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Katarina Witt

• Official website
• Katarina Witt at the Internet Movie Database
• olympic.org Athlete Profile – Witt

Awards and achievements
Preceded by Marita Koch	East German Sportswoman of the Year 1984	Succeeded by Marita Koch

Debi Thomas
Personal information
Full name	Debra Janine Thomas
Country represented	United States
Born	(1967-03-25) March 25, 1967 (age 45) Poughkeepsie, New York
Height	1.67 m (5 ft 5 1⁄2 in)
Former coach	Alex McGowan
Skating club	Los Angeles Figure Skating Club
Medal record Competitor for the  United States Ladies' Figure skating Olympic Games Bronze 1988 Calgary Ladies' singles World Championships Bronze 1988 Budapest Ladies' singles Silver 1987 Cincinnati Ladies' singles Gold 1986 Geneva Ladies' singles

Debra Janine "Debi" Thomas M.D. (born March 25, 1967) is an American figure skater and physician. She is the 1986 World champion and 1988 Olympic bronze medalist, having taken part in the Battle of the Carmens at those games.

Personal life[link]

Thomas was born in Poughkeepsie, New York.

In 1988, Thomas married Brian Vanden Hogen, a fellow college student. They later divorced and in 1996 she married former University of Arkansas football player Chris Bequette. She has a son, Christopher Jules ("Luc"), born in 1997.

Debi is the aunt of current University of Arkansas football defensive end and an SEC All-Freshman selection Jake Bequette.

Career[link]

She represented the Los Angeles Figure Skating Club from 1983 on, which launched her career. Debi was coached by Alex McGowan from age 10 until she retired from amateur competition at age 21.

Thomas won both the 1986 U.S. national title and the 1986 World Championships; those achievements earned Thomas the ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year award that year. She was the first female athlete to win those titles while attending college full time since Tenley Albright in the 1950s. She was the first African-American to hold U.S. National titles in ladies' singles figure skating.^[1] Thomas was a pre-med student at Stanford University during this time although it was unusual for a top U.S. skater to go to college at the same time as competing.^[1]

In 1987, Thomas was injured with Achilles tendinitis in both ankles and struggled at the U.S. Nationals, placing second to Jill Trenary, but rebounded at the World Championships, finishing a close second to East German skater Katarina Witt.

In January 1988, Thomas reclaimed the U.S. National title. At the 1988 Winter Olympics held in Calgary, she and Katarina Witt engaged in a rivalry that the media dubbed the "Battle of the Carmens", as both women skated their long programs to the music of Bizet's opera Carmen. Thomas skated strong compulsory figures and performed well in the short program to an instrumental version of "Something in My House" by Dead or Alive, but performed poorly in the long program. Thomas fell three (3) times in the long program. She placed fourth in the long program and won the bronze medal, behind Witt and Canadian skater Elizabeth Manley (Thomas fell from first place going into the long program to third place overall in the final standings). Thomas won the bronze medal at the 1988 World Figure Skating Championships and then retired from amateur skating.

Thomas was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2000. She was also selected by President George W. Bush to be part of the U.S. Delegation for the Opening Ceremonies of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin Italy along with other former Olympians: Dorothy Hamill, Eric Heiden, Kerri Strug, and Herschel Walker . Debi recently returned to the ice briefly to participate in "The Caesars Tribute: A Salute to the Golden Age of American Skating", an event which featured many of the greatest legends and icons of American figure skating.

Medical career[link]

After her figure skating career, Thomas went back to school to become an orthopedic surgeon. She graduated from Stanford University in 1991 with a degree in engineering and from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in 1997. Thomas followed this with a surgical residency at the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences Hospital and an orthopedic surgery residency at the Martin Luther King Jr./Charles Drew University Medical Center in South Central Los Angeles.

In June 2005, Thomas graduated from the Orthopaedic Residency Program at Charles R. Drew University in Los Angeles. She spent the next year preparing for Step I of the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgeons' exam and working at King-Drew Medical Center as a junior attending physician specialist. In July 2006, she began a one-year fellowship at the Dorr Arthritis Institute at Centinela Hospital in Inglewood, California, for sub-specialty training in adult reconstructive surgery.

As of November 2010, Thomas is in private practice at ORTHO X-cellence Debra J. Thomas, MD, PC in Richlands, Virginia. Bio Stop

Programs[link]

Competitive highlights[link]

References[link]

• Olympic Profile

External links[link]

• ESPN.com: Where are they now? Debi Thomas
• Stanford Magazine: Good-Bye Skates, Hello Scrubs
• The News-Gazette: Olympic skater Thomas joins Carle orthopedic staff
• Notable Black American women By Jessie Carney Smith