Ice queen Witt savors her chance to perform

Figure skating becomes more confusing almost daily, showered by fallout from the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic judging scandal. Among the beauties of the traveling shows is their immunity from judging and scoring, not to mention the great escape they provide.

Take it from four-time world champion Katarina Witt, who said performing remains her first love because audiences deserve a break.

"You want to take the people away from their troubles for a while," said Witt, in Dallas last week to promote the Smucker's Stars on Ice tour. "You want to give them some fantasy."

Witt, 37, and other luminaries, including reigning Olympic champion Alexei Yagudin, will perform at American Airlines Center on Friday night.

In a denim jacket and long skirt, Witt, the two-time Olympic champion from Germany, might have been mistaken for an artsy tourist. But the 61-city tour, with skaters performing three or four shows a week in different cities, is no vacation.

"You have to be disciplined," Witt said. "I have to work out every day to stay in shape while traveling."

Among the pleasant aspects of the tour, Witt said she enjoyed observing the sincere friendship between Salt Lake Olympic pairs champions Jamie Sale and David Pelletier of Canada and Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze of Russia. That foursome was central to the judging scandal that produced one controversy after another.

Since the pairs' duplicate Olympic gold medals, figure skating has disciplined key figures in the scandal and tried a new judging and scoring system. Last week, a splinter group headed by numerous big names in skating set out to supplant the International Skating Union, the sport's global authority. Dallas native Paul Wylie, the 1992 Olympic silver medalist, leads part of the charge for the start-up World Skating Federation.

While the sport suffers in a chaotic effort to distance itself from the Olympic scandal, the Stars on Ice show gives people a brief escape from turmoil, Witt said.

She broke into a huge grin at the mention of the Mavericks' Dirk Nowitzki, a German-born athlete with whom she can identify.

"I should invite him to the show," she said. "He is a big role model in Germany. Basketball really got a boost from him. Dirk gives big dreams to little boys and girls."

Though she cheers robustly for Nowitzki, Witt said she rarely pays attention to sports other than the Olympics. Movies provide her favorite escape. She listed Chicago, A River Runs Through It, and Sense and Sensibility as her favorites.

Witt's work on the Smucker's tour will end in mid-April. She said many projects await her at home in Berlin, including her jewelry firm and TV commentary commitments. She said she feels equally recognized in America and Europe.

"I'm a European who finds it great to be well-known in America," she said. "You sit between chairs. I feel that one of my cheeks is on each chair."

Except that she rarely gets a chance to sit.

"I think I'm a workaholic," she said. "I'm one of those people who lives to work."

Champions tour skipping Dallas

The Champions on Ice tour has canceled its Dallas stop, originally scheduled for mid-May. Ticket refunds are available at the points of purchase. Tour publicist Lynn Plage said organizers feared saturating the market. American Airlines Center was the main venue for the U.S. Championships in January.

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