Katarina Witt: 'Only With Passion'
Oct. 21, 2005 — -- Katarina Witt is an athlete, an artist, an actress, a television personality, a business woman and now a published author. In her new book, "Only With Passion," Witt chronicles the pressures she faced as a young female athlete growing up in East Germany.
Witt has won more figure skating titles than any other skater, including two consecutive Olympic gold metals, four world championship titles and eight national championships. She was recently inducted into the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame, and continues to compete professionally. This weekend in Atlantic City, N.J., she debuts as a commentator for ESPN and ABC's presentation of Skate America, a series running up to February's Olympic Games.
You can read two excerpts from "Only With Passion" below.
"I used to spend three hours a day just for compulsory figures. Can you imagine? I hated compulsories because they were so boring, skating in circles and circles and circles."
"I thank God every day they got rid of them," Jasmine said.
"It's totally changed the sport," I said. "But to be honest, as much as I disliked compulsories, in some ways they were good. You had to pay your dues. You had to patiently work your way up the skating ladder, and that gave you time to get mentally stronger. Each season we had very specific goals. We had time to learn to handle the pressure. And without compulsories, look what's happened. The champions started getting younger and younger, which meant they turned pro when they were too young. Like Oksana Baiul, who won the Olympics in 1994 when she was sixteen, then turned pro and fell off the deep end for a few years -- drinking and partying and nearly ruining her life. ... And it's sad for me to think of how she cut her amateur career so short. It kept her from developing into a legend. And there was Tara Lipinski, who won the Olympics in 1998 when she was fifteen and immediately turned professional. I saw her on the Stars on Ice tour in 2002, when she was just nineteen, and saw how much pain she was in. She finally had to have a hip operation, and to have a hip operation at that age is ridiculous."
"I don't see what that has to do with compulsories."
"Since they aren't spending hours and hours on compulsories, young skaters have time to work on the difficult jumps. They have to in order to master them. Maybe their technique isn't perfect, but they can land the triples because their bodies haven't matured, and they are still so small and quick. Over and over and over again they practice them, and each time they land, it generates three times their body weight on the landing foot. That's the physics of it. I wonder sometimes if my body would have broken down by now if I'd followed their regimen. I doubt I'd have had my longevity. It's too much. Your body is still developing, and over and over again you do these very difficult jumps that generate massive amounts of stress. I never had a serious injury that kept me out of a big competition. Now everyone has injuries -- to their feet or their knees or their backs. I see that Evgeny Plushenko, the Russian world champion, twenty-two years old, has constant pain in his knees from all his quadruple jumps. I don't think it's right. But when you're young, you don't think very far ahead. You just think in terms of the next day, the next week, the next competition. You don't think about injuries that could threaten your long-term health. The sport has gone too far, I'm afraid. It's breaking down too many of the best young skaters. Or maybe the skaters aren't doing enough off the ice to protect themselves."
"Protect themselves how? By refusing to follow their coach's orders?"
"We did so much working out off the ice -- not just in the winter but all year long -- that our bodies were prepared to survive the impact of landing the jumps."
"I need your help," a familiar voice said over the phone.
It was my manager, Elisabeth Gottman. This was a twist, since usually I'm the one who calls Elisabeth for help. She's much more than a manager: She's my business partner, my confidante, my friend. We own a sports and entertainment company together, and when I get an idea, she's the one I call to make it happen. I'm the one dreaming up schemes and projects, the creative artist. Elizabeth is the smart, practical businesswoman. How are we going to find the financing? Who can we get for a sponsor? How much will it cost? Where's the venue? Elizabeth has a tough reputation in business, because she's fiercely protective of me. But she's also honest and fair. We make a good team.
"How can I help you?" I asked, very cool, very professional, as if I were a concierge with all the answers.
"I need you to talk to a friend of mine," she said. "Actually, the daughter of a friend of mine. A skater. Her name's Jasmine. Jasmine Kronheim."
"What's this about?"
"Skating. Life. Coming of age. It's serious."
"That is serious. When does a girl come of age these days?"
"Good question. I have an eight-year-old. She's not there yet. Close. But I still have a year or two to go, I think. Jasmine's sixteen. Quite precocious. She and her mom are not seeing eye to eye on things at the moment about the future of her skating. So I volunteered you as an independent consultant. A mediator, if you will."
"Because I have all this time on my hands."
She laughed. She knew my schedule. It was, as usual, crammed. "You'll like this girl, I promise. She's very independent and disarming. You may even have seen her skate when you were doing your commentating on German TV. She trains with Peter Meier."
"My Peter Meier? From Chemnitz?" He'd coached me when I was a little girl, six and seven years old. He had to be in his sixties by now.
"He's in Dortmund now," Elisabeth said. "That's where Jasmine's from. He thinks she could be a great skater, maybe even a champion. She has all the talent in the world. But she's outgrown the Dortmund program, and he thinks she should go train at a place where she's around better skaters. To the States -- a place like Lake Arrowhead. Or maybe Simsbury, Connecticut. He wants her to see if she can get to the next level. I remembered you telling me how much it helped when you were young to train every day with skaters who were better than you."
"And the girl?"
"Doesn't want to go. But for the wrong reasons."
"Meaning?"
"A boyfriend. Well, ostensibly a boyfriend. He may just be a cover for deeper issues: fear, self-doubt, questions of identity and rebellion."
Now it was my turn to laugh. This was beginning to sound familiar.
"And the joke is what exactly?" Elisabeth asked.
"It's just that some things never change."
"Right. Like your own history of teenage rebellion? That's occurred to me, too. So you'll help?"
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