In one breath, Katarina Witt is talking about how much fun she is having performing in a professional figure-skating show, and in the next, she’s saying she doesn’t think she can put up with the demands of this lifestyle much longer.
Asked whether she will be traveling and performing in skating shows five years from now, Witt groans, then collapses back onto a sofa in a pretend faint. The move is typical Witt: theatrical and playful.
“I don’t know how my body’s going to keep it up,” says the 29-year-old Witt, who has been on the ice since she first put on skates at age 5 in her hometown of Karl-Marx-Stadt, in the former East Germany. “It’s getting really rough because I’m traveling all of the time, living out of a suitcase (actually, two suitcases). It’s hard.
“As fun and wonderful and interesting as it sounds, it can be really grueling. You’re never home, you never have your own stuff around and the worst is trying to find a laundry so you can clean your clothes.”
Witt made two brief stops in Chicago in early February. First, she kicked off the WinterBreak Chicago festival with a demonstration at the Sears Skate on State rink. A week later she performed in the Discover Card Stars on Ice tour for one night at the Rosemont Horizon. The latter is a 48-city tour featuring Witt and several other former Olympic champions.
Since making one last stab at competitive amateur skating in the 1994 Winter Olympics in Norway, Witt has been in almost constant motion. She has apartments in New York and Berlin but has seen little of them. Her full schedule is partly the result of good timing. The Olympic gold medal-winner in 1984 and 1988 is the grande dame of skating at a time when made-for-television competitions and traveling shows are proliferating.
Before joining Stars on Ice in November, Witt performed in a tour of 15 French provincial cities, in the Skates of Gold gala in Cincinnati and in “Ice Wars: USA vs. the World,” a team event televised by CBS, to name a little of her post-Olympic itinerary.
Although the shows provide work for former champions such as Witt, critics have lamented the blurring of lines between real competition and the hyped competition offered for television, and they’ve wondered if viewers’ interest will wane with as many as 20 figure-skating events on television this season.
“I was a little afraid when the season started and I saw so many shows coming on,” says Witt, who has won four World figure-skating championships. “I thought, `I hope people don’t get tired of it.’ But it doesn’t seem that way. Ratings are still very high, and people just love watching skating.
“And what’s happened is amazing. Now people are stopping me everywhere I go and saying, `I saw you on this show or that show.’ It gives us jobs and keeps us busy, and it’s wonderful for the kids as well because it shows them something they might want to do someday.”
Witt also doesn’t mind that the “competitions” many times are just showcases. In one event this year, for example, movie stars were the judges.
“They had no idea what they were judging,” she says. “But we went into it thinking it’s not serious competition. We had fun and it was a great evening of skating.”
Skating has always been enjoyable for her, says Witt, even when, at age 9, she was invited to begin training under East Germany’s most prominent coach, Jutta Mueller, and had to give up leisure time to spend four hours a day on the ice.
“Nobody had to push me,” she recalls. “It was just a part of my life, like other people did their jobs, I did my skating. It was my own free will.”
Being a skater afforded her opportunities, such as traveling, that were denied other East Germans, but along with the perks came great pressure to succeed. If you do well in this competition, then you can go to the next, she says she was told.
“It was like you had to pay back the government by winning medals, and, of course, you wanted to go to the competitions because you could leave the country, see something else, maybe buy some clothes and have just a little tiny bit of freedom.”
When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and Germany was reunified, it was more good timing for Witt.
“Before unification I never would have had all the opportunities I have now,” she says. “It was a perfect time for the wall to come down. Going to competitions, being a professional, all the things I’m doing now are possible. I’m really a free person.”
When Witt won the bulk of her medals in the 1980s, her parents weren’t allowed to leave East Germany and share in her triumphs. That’s one of the big reasons, she says, she decided to avail herself of a new International Skating Union eligibility rule that allowed her to try for another Olympic medal in 1994.
Some called her re-entry into Olympic skating a publicity ploy, and others publicly doubted she could even make the German team. Witt made that team, finished seventh in the 1994 Olympics and says competing in Norway was “the best decision I ever made.”
A new, more athletic generation of figure skaters who put five and six triple jumps into their programs had passed Witt by, but Witt’s artistry and grace as she skated to the music “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” brought thundering cheers from the Olympic audience. Her performance was a tribute to the devasted city of Sarajevo where she had won a gold medal in 1984.
“I didn’t go for a medal,” she says, “I just wanted to enjoy the skating and bring joy to the audience. It was very emotional to be there with my parents. I wanted to show them how it is to be in such a great competition. I walked away from that Olympics feeling it was the best experience I’d had in my career.”
Witt is using another emotional musical piece in her current performance in Stars on Ice. She is skating to music from the film “Schindler’s List,” and, as she has done before, she tries to do more than skate well.
“I always want to do something where I can get a message across,” she says. “When I saw this movie, I was totally moved by it. I wanted to skate to this music and develop a character in it.”
In 1991, Witt won an Emmy Award for her role in HBO’s “Carmen on Ice.” She skated with Brian Boitanofrom 1990 to 1992 in a touring professional show and has provided commentary for CBS, NBC and a German television network in their coverage of figure skating.
While she says she once thought of going after an acting career, she has no serious plans to do that anytime soon. She does say, though, that when she finishes with Stars on Ice in April, she will return to Germany to continue work on a movie, a fairy tale for a German production company she has formed. Witt skates and acts in the film, which she co-wrote. She wouldn’t reveal the storyline or say much else about the work.
“It’s a project I don’t really want to talk about yet because it’s not done,” she says.
It’s this kind of production work, though, that Witt hopes to do more of in the future. She calls herself a risk-taker, willing and anxious to jump into new businesses off the ice. Her work in U.S. television and a skating show she helped produce, edit and host in Germany has whet her appetite for more.
“I’ve always liked the way things are produced here (in the United States),” she says, “because they’re contemporary, upbeat and fun. I can take this experience to Germany, and I can do this stuff they’ve never seen before and influence how skating is presented in Germany. That’s very interesting to me.”
No permanent move back to Germany is in the works. Witt wants to continue to work and live both here and in her homeland.
“I want to keep going back and forth,” she says, “so I can be influenced by both markets. It keeps me moving more than the others, but it’s a great opportunity.”
For now, Witt is doing about four shows a week. Her days are busy with travel and workouts on the ice the day of a show. She uses hotel exercise rooms where they’re available and gets outside to run when she has time. Her days frequently end with post-show receptions, where she’s expected to sign autographs and mingle, a task she doesn’t mind. Witt opens up easily to others and says that’s part of being a good performer.
“When you perform, you show emotions and let go of your soul,” she says. “I try to keep my private life private, but I’m open to sharing with people. I’m comfortable with the press and with the camera, and that’s why it looks so easy.”
