Feast your eyes. The end of an era as the legendary Katarina Witt wins her last of 4 world titles. A rare and never seen before sweet moment between Witt and Thomas on the podium as they give each other a hug. History there for sure..
What was Heartbreaking about Debi Thomas is how she fell apart in her Final 2 Big Competitions. She was so prepared, trained and talented......yet she Burned Out in her last competitions.
Debie Thomas is an inspiration to me. She studied medicine and did figure scating until the olympics and would have been able to win, after the short program she was on first place...
I could watch this over and over again. What an era of great skaters! I was watching this as a teenager from behind the iron curtain together with my mom. We were dreaming of the golden West...but it appears we had a great time in the East as well.
Tres bel anniversaire katarina la plus legende éternelle et la plus grande carmen pour toujours. Sublime perfection de beauté et absolue. Magnifique de beaute. Quelle sublime merveille.❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
I cried and cried and cried watching this as a young boy. I thought I’d never see my Katarina again as she was going to be locked up in East Germany and never let out. What a dumb kid I was. Lol. Thank god the wall fell and she could enjoy a free life.
we are not "locked up" in the GDR. and Kati could and did travel anywhere she wanted. but she was always patriotic and loyal to the socialist fatherland. for the so called "western freedom". its just bullshit. we (as a whole society) were much more free in the GDR than since 1990. with capitalism takes over 95 of all factories got forc3fully closed. we had unemployment rates of 70% in some regions and overall 45%. 4 million young people are leaving the country because of sudden poverty. eastern Germany is today poorer than ever before. the birth-rate is the lowest in the world. millions of my fellow countrymen in east and west are sad that wall came down. Greetings from East-Germany.
Was für ein Quatsch Du hier schreibst! Ich komme auch aus der DDR und kann sagen, das nichts von dem, was du hier zum besten gibts, auch nur annähernd stimmt!
@@CarstenOepping you sound like some communist pig! Pretty much everybody in the GDR was locked up, and couldnt freely travel and leave the country. Maybe to Hungary or Russia, if they behaved. But certainly not to the west. The GDR was a totalitarian criminal system!
It's 2022. It still hurts to see my absolute favorite skater not at her best. Debi will always my sentimental favorite. Win,lose, or draw..... Debi you still Rock!!!
Kati Witt was so beautiful, i dont think ive ever seen a better looking skater than her, i think she won fans with not just her talent but her beauty too!!
Ekaterina Gordeeva's book, "My Love Sergey," describes Katarina Witt’s harassment of Debi Thomas. During practice, when a Carmen song by debi thomas was played, KatarinaWitt intercepted the song and began to slide, which troubled Debi. Ekaterina said, "Katarina Witt knew how to win. Unfortunately, figure skating is a sport. It was written that the one with the most points wins, it can't be helped. In modern times, Kim Yu Na is like that, right? It's true that I won with a high score...lol
Personne ne doit oublier que Katarina Witt et Midori Ito sont les deux seules patineuses a avoir présenté deux triples en combinaison dans cette compétition.
Liz Manley was only 4th after the figures and technical program. She was indeed first in the long program, but coming from fourth, that wasn't enough to lift her to the gold.
4th place for Manley in the short was right. However with Witt being 2nd in the short which was also right, had Manley won both the figures and long she would have won. And all that saw the figures here say it was ridiculous Witt passed her from behind on the loop (her worst figure) to win figures, and Manley deserved to win the long over Witt too even though neither had a great skate. I actually think she has a better case of being robbed of the gold here than in Calgary, despite that she skated better in Calgary.
I read somewhere that the "little talk" the 3 skaters had on the podium was that Liz congratulated Debi for her recent marriage, and Katarina was like "you got married? and I just found out?" :D
Nadia Rodriguez I just read this comment a year later but it's still terrible to spread such lies. Debi Thomas was married March 15, 1988 and the Olympics were held February 13 and 28, 1988. There is no way they would have congratulated her for getting married.
Gertie Shaw - Wrong!! This was not the 1988 Calgary Olympics. This was the 1988 World Championships in Budapest, Hungary. Debi Thomas did get married between those two events. By all accounts, the conversation among the women on the panel centered around that.
Yes. The medal ceremony from the European championships this year was similarly interesting in that when Ivanova and Kondrashova reached across in front of Witt to congratulate each other they knocked her off the top of the podium 😂
Dwayne Stukopski from Hamtramck was there and saw this in person. Afterward, he went to a restaurant, had a nice big bowl of goulash, two beers, then went back to his hotel and slept.
Pascoe Braun - Debi should have done Carmen. Had she executed it as least as well as she did at the U.S. Nationals, she would have won gold at both the Olympics and the Worlds. Katarina did a whole lot of nothing. Flirting and posing for long periods of time.
I used to watch Katarina a lot back in the 80s and I had a crush on her back then. I still do today as recent pictures show that she is aging just fine. Interesting note on Katarina: she has never married and does not have any children. She is currently single and free! ;)
Best Germany was Best Germany. Simple as that. And Katarina Witt was a great German patriot. I will always have the deepest respect for her and her wonderful country that was unfortunately dismantled.
thats not true. she did two 3toe loops and two 3 salchows one in combination with a double flip. manley actually won the long program that night but katarina finished 1st in the overall event.
Super, wenn man einer Diktatur hinterher trauert, die viele hundert Menschen erschossen hat, die einfach nur woanders leben wollten, die ihre eigenen Menschen bespitzelt hat, Regimekritiker in Zuchthäuser gesperrt und gefoltert hat (kannst du jetzt noch in Berlin besichtigen), für hunderte Zwangsadoptionen verantwortlich ist und staatliches Doping durchgeführt hat. Großartig, wenn man sowas toll findet…
Skating was a lot different back then than it is now. I would love to see more artistry in the sport than just jumping which leads to falls for some. Besides jumping for female figure skating was coming to the forefront in '88'. The Midori's and Kristi's took skating to a new level. If the judging that is in place today was in place back then. Maybe you would have seen different skaters medal in Olympics and Worlds.
@@cashed-out2192 this was 30 years ago. It’s like comparing the women who won in the 50s and 60s (like Peggy Fleming) to this. It’s what happens 🤷🏽♀️ it doesn’t make the achievements at the time any less groundbreaking
@@victoriagill3337 Well, these Koreans, Japanese. Russians, and Canadian women for his sport, all stand a chance. All the American women should stay home. Even the German women, since Kat Witt, are not even good anymore, either.
Getting rid of school figures was a mistake. Turning the sport into a jumping contest has stripped it of everything that made it watchable. My mother and I watched many skating programs in the 90s (was a big Kristi fan). I know times have changed, but Id argue it's not for the better...
I know there's a video of the Bonaly incident on here somewhere. She finished second at the '94 Worlds behind Yuka Sato. I dont remember how well either skater performed but Bonaly felt she was wronged by the judges and refused to stand on the podium during the medal ceremony. The official presenting the medals whispered something to her and put his hand on her arm and "nudged" her and she finally stepped up...
I remember that well...I'm surprised nobody has posted a video of it here. Very unsportsmanlike of Thomas. Witt's performance was good...not great...but still FAR better than Debi's. As I recall, Debi's butt hit the ice twice during her performance and the choreography to Carmen was nonexistent. Reminds me of the Surya Bonaly incident in 1994. People need to lose gracefully.
I adore Katarina... she had beauty, class, poise, wit, talent, flirtatiousness and sensuality. Just gorgeous... And Liz was so sweet... Debbie leaves me cold... can't find much there and I am fellow American.
This is not about mental brilliance... it's about skating competition.. orthopedic brilliance doesn;t give person necessarily a lot of warmth or other abilities... so lets stick to skating ....
baritonebynight For me it is the most important part, especially emotions, I saw a lot more mental, emotional envolvement in Katarina's skating than in cold, lifeless, emotionless skating of Thomas... besides, orthopedics don't require a mental genius. She is not a brain surgeon... which wouldn't;t make her a better skater than Katarina anyway and Katarina has more class, Thomas is just a sore loser with a temper......
@Carpentersfan2003 I have to disagree with you. Yuka's basic skating skills blow Surya's out of the water. Yuka skates with more flow and musicality. But the real deal breaker is the fact that Surya did NOT skate cleanly. She made mistakes on her jumps and she had to skate cleanly to beat Yuka.
Exactly. Surya messed up some of her strength (jumps) in the long program while Yuka did all her jumps cleanly. Making the whining Surya should have won even more ridiculous. She was way overscored if anything.
+GIOJL At the Olympics, during the awards ceremony, Witt reached over to Thomas, & Thomas just kind of slapped/tapped her on the thigh, no eye contact.
...but then she removed her medal and and kept it off...audience booing her all the way. I would LOVE to know what the man said to her...probably something like "get your butt up there or you'll never skate again". She may have deserved the gold...I dont know, but something about her has always rubbed me the wrong way. I think she's unprofessional and lacks grace, and is a little weird, frankly. But there's no excuse for her tantrum at that medal ceremony...you really have to see it.
Wasn’t it Sonia Bianchetti & Brita Lindgren (referee and assistant referee) who tried to start a breakaway group in competition with the ISU and in doing so ended up banned for life
No Debi should have won the Gold, she was 1st going into the long program and Katarina missed a triple so the door was open for Debi. Debi could have skated all of her jumps, as she said, "In her sleep," but it was being psychologically passive that did her in. She was capable and physically able to complete a perfect program but her own mind sabotaged her.
@@conniebarnes9274 I am from Canada and sorry Elizabeth Manley did more jump but if you compare the spin,the choreography and the interpretation of Katarina Witt she was to good.Manley chose to skate to so many different music in one program it was not a good choice.Katarina had very good technique i saw her fall once in all her career live in Montreal on a triple toe loop and she was mad and she felt getting out the ice.