The starting point of her career: Katarina Witt made a name for herself for the first time as an figure skater at the GDR championships in 1979. At the age of 14 she climbed the podium and finished third. Suddenly it all happened very quickly …
Success after success followed: in 1981 Witt won his first GDR championship title. The following year, the German ice princess became European vice champion and vice world champion. She was finally able to cancel second place in 1983 and 1984 as a European champion.
In 1984, Witt actually took it one step further: she secured the gold medal in figure skating for the first time at the Sarajevo Olympic Games. At the 1988 Games in Calgary, Witt returned home as an Olympic champion. After Sonja Henie, she was the second skater to repeat her title.
With two Olympic victories, four world championships and six European championship titles, Katarina Witt is one of the most successful skaters in history. With several awards in her luggage, she managed to end her sports career with her head held high in the late 1980s. What followed next?
Katarina Witt moved into show business. He began studying acting, which he quickly refused. Instead, he toured the United States from 1990 to 2003 with the famous ice show “Holiday on Ice”.
At the same time, Witt was in front of the camera as an actress. Born in Brandenburg, she received an Emmy in 1990 for her dance film “Carmen on Ice”. He also co-produced the film “Die Eisprinzessin” (1996).
Then in 1994 the surprising return to ice: Katarina Witt worked her way up to seventh place at the Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway. But then she eventually quit her skating career.
Witt replaced his skates with a pen and a camera: in 1994 he published his first autobiography with “My Years Between Duty and Freestyle”. In 1998 he also honored the cover of the best-selling “Playboy” from the days of Marilyn Monroe.
In addition, he made common cause with famous actors. For example, Witt was seen in the 1998 action movie “Ronin” alongside Academy Award winner Robert De Niro. Thanks to a cameo in “Jerry Maguire – Game of Life” (1996), Witt also met Hollywood star Tom Cruise.
In the German television film “Der Feind in mein Leben” (2013), Witt portrayed herself as a victim of stalking in the lead role and once again demonstrated her acting skills.
Today, Katarina Witt works full time as a producer of figure skating and TV shows in Europe and the United States. But it remained on everyone’s lips mainly due to various jobs on German television.
In the same year he started his television program “Stars auf Eis”. The show, in which celebrities venture onto the ice, ran for two years on ProSieben. Witt moderated. In early 2009 she was also presenter of the diet program “The Biggest Loser”.
With “Dancing on Ice” a similar format to the Witt show “Stars auf Eis” is back on television in 2019. The former ice princess is part of the jury of the Sat.1 program along with Judith Williams and Daniel Weiss and takes the inexperienced celebrities under the microscope.
In addition to the entertainment industry, Witt has never ignored sports. In 2011 she led the submission of Munich’s bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics, a project particularly close to Witt’s heart. However, when the decision was made not to go home, but to Pyeongchang in South Korea, Witt burst into tears.
“The investigations don’t stop,” Witt revealed in an interview with “Zeit Magazin” in 2015. “I teach motivational classes in companies and am an ambassador for Disney on Ice and BMW. I also take great care of my foundation, which supports and promotes children with physical disabilities. And I have begun to have a fulfilling private life. “
The former model athlete has been denied his family to this day. “You can’t have it all. I’ve been fighting for years for my dream. I got ice cream. I’ve lived in America, I’ve had long-term relationships that nobody knows …”, he explained in an interview with Stern magazine in 2015 “.
Katarina Witt has had relationships with “Mac Gyver” Richard Dean Anderson, the Berlin musician Ingo Politz (photo), the Hollywood director Danny Houston and the Hamburg musician Rolf Brendel.
To this day, children are not part of Witt’s life. “For many women, children are the fulfillment of their life. My fulfillment has been figure skating or my job. I’ve learned that I can’t have everything in life.”
