Now we will finally get that chance. In December, Witt, who turns 28 next week, will compete in the German national championships, the first step on a slippery path toward February’s Winter Games in Norway. Witt has trained most of this year at her old rink in Chemnitz under the tutelage of her tough, old coach–the almost-as-legendary Frau Jutta Muller. But she hasn’t yet skated in a single competition’, performing just a handful of public exhibitions. And even then, dressed as a comely Robin Hood, she skated only her short program. it lasts about two and a half minutes and requires just four jumps, three spins and a little fancy footwork. Witt’s free-skating routine, the critical and far more demanding four-minute skate that usually decides the gold medal, has been kept completely on ice.
Witt’s biggest problem, though, is not the four minutes, but the almost six years that have elapsed since she last competed under international rules. Since her 1988 goldmedal performance in Calgary, ladies’ figure skating has progressed by leaps and…leaps. A sport that once resembled ballet now has more in common with gymnastics. If Witt makes the German team, she will have to compete at the ‘94 Olympics with younger skaters, including Ukraine’s 16-year-old world champion Oksana Baiul, China’s Lu Chen and France’s Surya Bonaly, who routinely do difficult triple jumps that were never part of Witt’s repertoire. “She can’t do any of the stuff required to win today,” says Evy Scotvold, coach of U.S. champion Nancy Kerrigan. “It’s like saying Jersey Joe Walcott is going to come back and fight. It’s a nice story, but not even close.”
Witt admits she’s a throwback to an era where style was valued over tricks. “There are things you learn and things you just have that come from inside,” she says. “I’m a performer.” Witt isn’t about to look foolish trying new triple jumps now that she is, as she likes to put it, a “mature” woman. (Witt’s maturity was always part of her appeal, particularly to men. They are far more likely to recall Witt’s most famous spill–the one out of her outfit–than any jump she ever made.) “Skating should be more than skate-jump, skate-jump, skate-jump,” she says. “I am fighting for a balance between athleticism and artistry.”
it’s a fight she is almost certain to lose, if other skaters successfully land their jumps. But at recent competitions, the best female skaters have had numerous spills–and in situations far less pressure packed than the Olympics. “Maybe Katarina can’t do the jumps, but I’m not convinced the others can either,” says Peter Krick, executive director of the German Figure Skating Federation. “If Katarina can do what she does do without falling, maybe the artistic marks will put her in front.”
But will she get her golden chance? When the Berlin wall fell, so did Witt’s reputation at home. She had been an unabashed booster of East Germany’s sports machine, and, as the darling of the socialist state, enjoyed privileges unknown to its average citizen. The German press reported that she spied for the secret-police agency Stasi, a charge she has repeatedly denied. Even after reunification, Witt scored zero point for honesty when she said that “life under communism wasn’t so bad.” She remains unapologetic. “I don’t regret anything in my life,” Witt says. “If you lived in East Germany, you can understand the problems. No one else can judge it.”
That hasn’t stopped many Germans, who have jeered her public appearances. Germany’s skating judges may feel the same way. There are at least three younger skaters who can do the triple jumps vying with Witt for just two spots on Germany’s Olympic team. None is of Katarina’s caliber. But Germany might prefer to send competitors who speak to the country’s future rather than one, however illustrious, who is a reminder of its bitter past.
