Sparkling Witt

Back in the '80s, when the world was used to sweet, demure figure skaters in pastel outfits, Katarina Witt sliced through the stereotypes and became the sexy East German skater who flirted with the crowd -- and won back-to-back gold medals at the 1984 and 1988 Winter Olympics.

Twice chosen as one of the world's 50 Most Beautiful People by People magazine, Witt gave communism a different face, while powering herself to four world championships and a half-dozen European titles.

Now skating with Smucker's Stars on Ice, Witt, 37, says it's hard to compare skating professionally and at the amateur level.

"Then, being ready for competition was the peak of the season," Witt says. "The most difficult part now is traveling, sitting in taxis and planes. Sometimes you almost fall out of the bus and into the arena. Just skating would be easier."

Despite the rigors of the road, Witt says she prefers being a pro.

"It's so much more enjoyable than competing," she says. "Now it's about the skating and performing."

Witt, who competed for what was then East Germany, says she believes she benefited from both her lives -- the one with the Berlin Wall and the one without.

"When I skated in 1988, I still did not know what was coming after," she remembers. "The wall came down at the perfect time for me."

The Berlin Wall, which divided Germany, fell on Nov. 9, 1989, just in time for Witt to turn pro, something that would not have been possible before.

"I was very lucky," she says, "because of the braveness of the German people going into the streets and demonstrating peacefully."

Witt also acknowledges that she was fortunate to have lived in a communist country that supported her so that she could learn to skate, something her parents could not have afforded.

"I was able to use where I was," she says. "It doesn't fall into your lap. You have to have certain luck, but you have to work hard for it."

Working hard is something she and her Stars on Ice tour mates -- Kurt Browning, Jamie Sale, David Pelletier, Todd Eldredge, Jenni Meno and Todd Sand, Alexei Yagudin and Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze -- have in common.

"It's a very powerful show," she says, "with strength and athleticism. It's a celebration of skating and less theatrical than in past years.

"We have a cowboy number [set to Elvis Presley's remixed A Little Less Conversation] where the guys shake their butts and the women go crazy," she says and laughs.

Witt follows that rowdy number with a solo to Barbra Streisand's What Are You Doing for the Rest of Your Life?, "sort of a quiet moment after the guys shake their butts," she says.

Even after all her awards, Witt says it's still the audience that matters.

"I don't have to prove anything to anyone," she says, "just to an audience, that it's worth it for them to come see us.

"The whole reason [for skating] is for the audience, to emotionally involve them."