Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 9, 1992 TAG: 9202090056
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: D5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ALBERTVILLE, FRANCE LENGTH: Medium
GERMANY'S KATARINA WITT TAKES STARDOM FROM ICE TO TV BOOTH
THE SKATING STAR of the last Winter Olympics hopes to be the television star of this winter's Games. Katarina Witt, who won her second Olympic gold medal with a sexy "Carmen in Calgary," will be decked out in microphone and CBS blazerfor the figure skating competition in Albertville.\ She was a siren on skates, with looks and moves that could melt the heart of any Cold War zealot. Katarina Witt is back at the Olympics, and America will soon decide if she's just as nice to watch when she's not on ice.
Is the two-time Olympic gold medalist ready for prime time? TV viewers will deliver that judgment when Witt debuts as a CBS-TV figure skating commentator.
"I'm nervous," the 26-year-old German says with a slight laugh. "This is big. This is huge. . . . It's not my language. Sometimes I may not be able to say what I want to say. Such a large audience is listening to me."
"I want to be good," she adds in near-flawless English. "I want to do a good job."
Witt's new career seems trivial compared with the dramatic upheaval she has witnessed in her homeland since the '88 Calgary Olympics. When we last saw Witt there, she was the Lady in Red, the skating Carmen (one of two that year), a glamour girl who received thousands of love letters and silenced all those cruel jokes about East German women pumped up with steroids.
Since then, the Berlin Wall has fallen, Germany has reunited and Katarina Witt, a child of Communism, is fast becoming a lady of capitalism. She promotes Danskin, DuPont and Diet Coke, tours with '88 Olympic champion Brian Boitano and won an Emmy award for "Carmen on Ice."
"For me, it turned out really, really good. All of a sudden everything was possible," Witt says. "Before I had to go and ask the sports federation to do a tour with Brian. Now I make a decision, I make up my mind. The next day, I'm going to go for it."
"You're much more independent," she adds. "I've learned so much in the last two years. I grew up so much more, learning about business."
All the freedom may be fresh and new, but Witt says it feels like it has never been any other way.
"This is the funniest thing," she says. "You can't imagine how it was like before. You get used to new things so easily."
Witt has spent a big chunk of the past few years living out of a suitcase, bouncing from airports to hotels to stadiums on her U.S. skating tours. She hasn't done much sightseeing, but enough to form some impressions about the country.
"I feel real comfortable there," she says. "America is a country where everything is possible - the good and the bad. . . . I see what's going on. Even America has big problems now, with the recession and the economy."
If Witt is discovering America, be sure Hollywood has discovered her Vogue model's face and flawless smile. So far, though, the offers haven't exactly overwhelmed her.
"They always send me scripts being the innocent, stupid East German, you're living in East Germany, you come to America, all of a sudden, you're surprised at how great everything is," she says.
She is intrigued by one project, though she declines to provide more details. "As you Americans say, I don't want to talk about it until my chickens are hatched."
Witt still practices everyday. She competes occasionally as a professional. And she still loves performing.
"I'm still in the middle of a skating career," she said. "You can't really think what's going to happen in the next 10 years. You have to take it year by year. I'm not planning my life. I just go ahead and do what I enjoy. That is the best thing for me."
Nowadays, she is preparing for her commentator's job at the Albertville Winter Games, traveling with a language teacher to polish her English.
She also will be joined in Albertville by her parents, who were not allowed to leave the country to witness her gold medals in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, in '84 and in Calgary four years later.
She said she thinks she'll offer a special perspective for viewers. "What I try to do," she says, "is bring closer to the audience how an athlete feels before the competition."
In doing so, she also learns how an ex-athlete feels before the competition, and she admits to a twinge of envy.
"You're standing there," she says, "thinking, `God, I really want to compete. . . . I really want to jump on the ice.' "