Skating Madonna Seeks Final Fling -- Witt Faces Hazardous Rout To Lillehammer

FRANKFURT, Germany - When Katarina Witt steps on the ice, you can almost hear the sizzle. She is universally acknowledged as the sexiest woman on skates.

Her love affairs with celebrities frequently titillate in the world's gossip columns. This is why the TV gods are so anxious for her to make a successful return from show business and help melt the ice in what could be a rather frigid Winter Olympics.

But, as with any great former champion seeking a reprise, the road back is a hazardous route. Just how thin is the ice was demonstrated here the other night. Katarina was exhibiting her new Olympic free program for the first time. She tripped and fell on her much-admired bottom while trying to negotiate a triple toe loop jump. She was, she admitted, very nervous.

In times past, a lack of confidence was not a Witt trait - on or off the ice. After winning her second Olympic gold in 1988, in Calgary, she was sure enough of herself to snub ski playboy Alberto Tomba in public as "not compatible."

Her liaisons with the likes of Boris Becker have produced spicy headlines, though her fling with real-estate tycoon Donald Trump ended in him refusing to take her calls.

It has been reported that the Stasi, the East German secret police, bugged her bedroom, timed and graded her personal-best seven-minute love-making ("Sexual intercourse from 20:00 to 20:07" read an entry in her files) as "unsatisfactory" for recruitment to the Mata Hari-James Bond league of spies.

Skating's sex goddess denies cooperating with the Stasi, but secret documents supposedly included 1,600 pages of reports on her. The publicity surrounding her Stasi connection cost Witt her relationship with Richard Dean Anderson, the actor who played the TV character MacGyver.

"I knew my phone was tapped and I was followed all the time, so of course I was contacted," says Kati, as she is known throughout the skating world. "But I did not inform on people."

How about those technical merit marks for her love-making?

"That is ridiculous. It's personal, nobody's business. Anyway, they didn't get everything," she says, more in amusement than anger.

Death threats `scary'

Katarina Witt is accustomed to her fame coming at the price of brutal invasion of her privacy. Last year, a fan received a three-year sentence in California after stalking her for several months, mailing her nude pictures of himself and threatening to kill her if he couldn't have her.

"That was scary. For a long time, I thought he would get to me. I thought I would have to quit the sexy routines, the modeling and even skating. Then I thought: `Why the hell should I?' I am a skater, but more than that, I am a woman. It is because I've never forgotten that, that I have my status today."

After her first Olympic gold in 1984, when she was barely 18, Katarina received so much fan mail that sacks remained unopened for months. A good percentage contained marriage proposals. A greater percentage outlined other propositions.

A then-unsophisticated Katarina laughed at the situation, saying: "These men don't even know me."

She could have had a million-dollar promotional contract with Revlon, but East German officials would not allow it. Because of her political value, Witt was kept on a tight rein. She praised her country's system.

Freedom at a cost

Her acquiescent attitude, together with revelations of luxuries (a car, her own apartment) not available to her country's rank and file, produced a backlash when the wall came down between East and West Germany.

The situation got worse when Witt refused to criticize the system that had done so much for her.

In 1990 she said: "The whole theme of the end of East Germany is like a wound for me."

More recently she declared: "Even though you lived in a strict structure, there is a safety in that. When you are free, you can do anything you want, but you lose that feeling of safety."

"I like to live on the edge"

When Witt announced she would seek eligibility under revised international skating rules to compete in the Lillehammer Olympics, many laughed, including European champion Surya Bonaly, who said: "Her time has passed. She will spoil her image."

Carlo Fassi, the British coach, scoffed: "It is all a publicity ploy. Nearer the date, she will develop an injury."

Witt did not take kindly to all this negativism.

"I seriously didn't need a publicity stunt. There was enough going on in my life. What am I supposed to do now, have something amputated at the last moment so I can say I can't do it?

"Of course it's a risk, but you've got to take risks. I am not a person who lives off past success. I don't want to be put away in a drawer. I like to live on the edge.

"I think in life you only regret what you never have done. If you don't risk anything, then why don't you just stay home and eat potato chips?

"People are asking: `Why are you destroying your own monument?' But I'm alive, not dead. Why should I have a monument anyway? Whatever happens, no one can take my medals away from me.

"At the moment, all I'm thinking about is making the German team."

`People think I am too old'

To get to Lillehammer, she must place in the top three in the German championships in Herne this weekend.

Three will go to the European championships in Copenhagen in January. The top two will represent Germany at the Olympics in February.

Witt was impressive in a technical routine in a September exhibition. Her slippery celebration here of her 28th birthday, a four-minute program choreographed to "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" was clearly less successful.

But Witt believes she can make the team.

"A lot of people think I'm mad. They think I am too old and have too much to lose. But I won't have 15-year-olds telling me I am too old."

The current world champion, Oksana Bayul of Ukraine, was 15 when she gained her title. A German, Tanya Szewczenko, 17, is a favorite for a medal.

"I know I won't be able to match the young skaters with their triple lutzes. I won't be trying to do six triple jumps. But artistically I've improved.

"We'll see what direction the judges want skating to go, whether all they want is jumps, or whether there is still room for artistry," Witt said.

"I'm not out there to just stand still and be pretty. But I know my limits because I am a very realistic sort of person. Maybe the gold medal is out of reach. But there's got to be something else to the sport - not elegance, but maybe maturity. I want to bring out the joy of skating, to tell a story on the ice, to tell it with the soul and the heart . . .

"A lot of people like watching skating but most don't know what the hell these jumps are. People want to hear different pop musicians and they want to enjoy different kinds of actors and actresses, so why can't there be a place in skating again for someone like me?"

She understands publicity

The current German champion, Marina Kielmann, sixth in the world, joked: "I think it's like The Beatles coming out with a new record. Perhaps this is a way for Katarina to help push her upcoming autobiography."

Witt reached the peak of her technical ability in 1984. When she won her second Olympic gold in Calgary, her routine had no new difficulty.

Where she had previously pranced along to a set of Broadway show tunes, she did flaunt her new sexuality, interpreting the earthy Carmen who knew just how to manipulate the Don Joses in the capacity audience.

"I admit I like to flirt," Witt said. "If some people think my routines have been too sexy or erotic, that is not for me to imagine. All I know is that I did it with a twinkle in my eye."

Witt and her long-time coach, Jutta Mueller, knew precisely the advantage of publicity. Before the 1988 Games, Witt gave an exhibition in which a breast "accidentally" fell out of her costume. It just happened to happen in front of a bunch of photographers. Their pictures were a great hit.

In what appears to be a similar bid for publicity, Witt recently posed in assorted scanties.

Trained like high jumper

To cope with the physical demands of skating, Witt has been working with Frank Dick, Britain's national track and field coach. She has shed a few pounds.

"I cannot train the same way as I did in 1988, because of my age. I had to find a different way, and I did. Now I have a conditioned new body."

This was achieved by a tough combination of weight training and a technical routine used by top high-jumpers.

"The thing that impresses me most about her is her desperate hunger to win," the coach said. "We had one session when she raced on mountain bikes in a group which included the motor-racing driver Gerhard Berger. She must have put in about 15 kilometers and refused to let any of them get away from her.

"Some say her biggest problem will be in re-adjusting to competitive sport from show business. But the adrenalin rate is the same for both elements - the difficulty is that in competition you cannot afford a single mistake. Getting back to this sort of perfection is something she is working on."

As long as figure skating is marked in two categories, for technical merit and artistic impression, there will be a place for a Katarina Witt, who can seize the limelight from acrobatic jumping beans with just a fluttering of those beautiful eyelashes.