Katarina Witt: A Pop Culture Triple (Toe Loop) Threat
By Michael Jones | December 31, 2020
A figure skater born in an authoritarian state who got scolded by Dr. Ruth, won 2 gold medals AND an Emmy, rebuffed a gross pick-up line from Donald Trump, caused Playboy magazines to soar off the shelves, starred in a movie with Robert DeNiro, and was featured in a 90s dance song with one of the members of La Bouche!?
Sweet dreams of rhythm and triple lutzes!
Of course we’re talking about Katarina Witt, the Olympic powerhouse who helped make figure skating among the most iconic sports during the last 40 years. And sure, a certain Nancy and Tonya helped with that too (not to mention a backflipping Surya Bonaly!), but the global footprint of Witt—Katarina the Great as many billed her—made a world class figure skater into a pop culture crossover.
Countless others have dug deep into Witt’s figure skating legacy. The key takeaway: she was good. Real good. Like the Adele of figure skaters, if you’re imagining that Adele picture where she’s holding 1,400 Grammy Awards. Witt won the gold at the ’84 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, then for the next four years flip-flopped with American figure skater Debi Thomas to be the best in the world. Which brings us to 1988 and…
The Dr. Ruth Freak-Out
At the ’88 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Witt was attempting to do what very few people have done: become a back-to-back Olympic gold medal winner. She was of course up against Thomas, and the drama was high as both Witt and Thomas chose music from Carmen to skate to, letting the media bill this like a professional wrestling bout: The Battle of the Carmens. Just like that time Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey showed up at the VMAs wearing the same dress.
And speaking of dresses, Witt’s ’88 Olympics blue dress made history itself. By most standards today it was basically a blue dress with some feathers. But back in 1988, it stopped the presses. A Canadian coach called it practically “a g-string” (one has to wonder if this Canadian coach ever saw a g-string), and even Dr. Ruth was contacted by Reuters to comment on the dress. Her response? Figure skaters shouldn’t wear outfits that could arouse judges. 😳
“She might have had no intention of making this into a spectacle, but it certainly will arouse the judges,” Dr. Ruth said. “I would say that in order to keep a certain decorum there should be some regulations on what type of dress is appropriate.”
Oddly enough in that same interview Dr. Ruth went on to describe how skiers make the best lovers. “They don’t just sit and drink coffee and they move the bottom half of their bodies well, which is very beneficial.” Paging Gus Kenworthy.... but alas, Dr. Ruth’s vision for a dress code came true, and the “Katarina Rule” was born requiring skaters to (in the words of Jurassic Park) cover their butts. Or as Bustle put it, Katarina Wittt’s butt cheek single-handedly changed the figure skating dress code for over a decade. (That butt cheek took home its second gold medal though, winning the Battle of the Carmens, and it wouldn’t be the end of said butt cheek’s foray into the history books.)
The 90s called and they said “Skate With Me”
The 80s may have set the rink stage, but the 90s are where Katarina Witt really gets her pop culture creds. What do you do after you win two gold medals? Well first you win an Emmy for a performance of Carmen on ice… aptly called Carmen on Ice. Then you star in a commercial where you lure a bunch of boys onto the ice and boogie to the dulcet sounds of a cold bottle of Diet Coke being cracked open. And then you wait for CBS to call and say two magical words: “Ice Wars.”
In 1994, after the absolute blockbuster chaos of the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan story, figure skating was riding an all-time high in the zeitgeist of American culture. So much so that after television network CBS lost the rights to broadcast NFL football games, they turned to figure skating (and the Gone With the Wind sequel miniseries Scarlett, because frankly my dear, lots of people don’t give a damn about football) to save their November sweeps. Thus was born Ice Wars: The USA vs. The World, where four figure skaters from the U.S. battled four figure skaters from… well, the world.
The opening credits are a dream. Graceful figure skating twists and turns against a backdrop of NYC skyscrapers pair with Ella Fitzgerald crooning Autumn in New York, then suddenly break way to John Mellencamp’s and Meshell Ndegeocello’s “Wild Night” and eight figure skaters going absolutely bananas on the ice, with Katarina Witt wearing a Robin Hood outfit. For real. And it must have worked, because Witt and company propelled Ice Wars into a 13-year phenomenon.
But the 90s also took Witt out of the figure skating world and directly into… dance clubs? Yep, in 1995, Witt joined with Melanie Thornton (the voice behind 90s dance sensation La Bouche) as well as singers Joan Faulkner and Linda Rocco who sang back-up for acts like Milli Vanilli, for the most 90s dance track imaginable: “Skate With Me.”
Not to be hyperbolic, but this might be the best 90s dance song no one has ever heard. Katarina Witt even does one of those 90s dance talk-raps in the middle of it! You know, the kind that punctuate songs by Cathy Dennis, The Real McCoy, Le Click, etc. And the lyrics are Susan Powter-level inspiration:
Just take the mirror and hold up high
Look at yourself straight in the eye
Your moment of truth has finally arrived…
Skate with me… skate with me…
We don’t need tomorrow, no cause you’ll be far away …
Skate with me… skate with me…
If your heart says follow go and you can come along and skate with me.
Now that is some ooey-gooey dance pop music bliss that may or may not make any sense, but just try not listening to this song and feeling like you can land a double salchow right in the middle of Limelight or Palladium.
The Playboy cover that broke the magazine racks
Long before ESPN would release their annual “Body” issue showing off naked Gronk or chiseled Ronda Rousey or the 🍑 of Jerry Rice, Witt appeared on the December 1998 cover of Playboy Magazine and in a spread that delivered all the body positivity. For $5.95 you could catch Katarina Witt baring it all – or, if you were one of those who bought Playboy “for the articles,” you could read the latest story from Joyce Carol Oates or read 20 questions with Gore Vidal!
The issue was so popular it became the first issue of Playboy to sell out since the 1950s, flying off the racks of Hudson News, truck stop shelves, or your local Borders or Media Play (RIP). Yes, long before anyone would break the internet, Witt and her butt cheeks broke the magazine racks. She was also paid seven figures to pose, making her one of the highest paid models for Playboy in the 1990s.
“I'd be walking through an airport and I'd see someone with the issue of Playboy in their hands, and they'd see me, and their eyes would go right to my chest. Straight down—zap,” Witt says in her memoir Only With Passion.
Decades later, the niece of outgoing President Donald Trump would write that her uncle also noticed Katarina Witt, but hated her because Witt rebuffed his advances. This past year when Mary Trump dropped her book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, she included an anecdote about how Trump once tried to hit on Katarina Witt. Witt—just like the states of Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in the 2020 election—refused him, leading Trump to add Witt to a grudge list of women who declined to date him.
And that right there feels worth at least another gold medal for Witt.
Some bonus pop culture scores from the judges
Witt’s a fascinating character in the narrative of sports stars who cross over into pop culture figures. The East German “Stasi” (secret police) kept 3,500 pages of files on her, as they monitored her every move in the late 70s/80s, ensuring she could be seen as “the most beautiful face of socialism.” The East German government even got involved in Witt’s first relationship, forcibly stationing her boyfriend at a military post far away to make sure Witt wasn’t distracted by a boy in her pursuit for Olympic gold.
When the Berlin Wall fell, Witt spent much of the early 90s fielding accusations that she was a spy for East Germany, or criticism that she didn’t speak out against the regime. ESPN dove deep into this moment in a documentary called The Diplomat which, if you can get your hands on a copy, is a great journey into the intersection of sports, politics, and the Cold War.
As for more pop culture Katarina Witt treasures? The best might be her appearance in the 1998 Robert DeNiro-led movie Ronin. She plays a figure skater, but don’t let that fool you: there’s some good acting chops on display, and her character plays a massive role in the film’s ending. Without giving too much away, let’s just say that if you like your double toe-loops with a dose of snipers and car chases, this movie’s for you. You’ll also find her briefly hanging out with Jerry Maguire, or in season one of Everybody Loves Raymond.
And hey, if you have an extra $7.50 USD lying around, you can always head on over to eBay and grab yourself a Katarina Witt action figure. Blue feather costume that shows off too much butt cheek sold separately.
An unabashed 80s & 90s pop culture junkie, Michael Jones is a Brooklyn-based writer and co-host of the Pop Trash Podcast.