Skating tour leaves Witt homesick for laundry

Two-time Olympic champion Katarina Witt knows exactly what she's going to do as soon as she gets back home to Germany after 15 weeks on the road with Smucker

"Believe it or not, I love to do laundry and folding," Witt said by phone from a tour stop in Cincinnati. "So I can't wait to do all my laundry and fold my clothes and hang it up on a hanger after it has been in a suitcase for four months."

Witt and her fellow athletes in the 17th annual Stars on Ice are a more than two-thirds through the 61 dates on the tour, which kicked off after Christmas and wraps up April 12.

While she knows that the trade-off for getting to skate in front of a live audience is nonstop traveling, Witt said she's starting to miss her family, friends and picture frames.

"I just felt like, who knows how many years I have left, and I just wanted to spend as much as I have on the ice."

At 37, Witt is one of the more experienced skaters in the cast. "She's enjoying the spirit and energy that young skaters like 2002 Olympic men's champion Alexei Yagudin and 2002 Olympic pair champions Jamie Sale & David Pelletier of Canada and Elena Berezhnaya & Anton Sikharulidze of Russia bring to the production.

In addition to ensemble numbers for the opening and closing, Witt skates a solo program to Barbra Streisand music and a blues program with John Zimmerman and Gorsha Sur. She describes the latter as "flirtatious" - something she knows a thing or two about.

Witt has long been a fan favorite, generating on-ice heat with playful and sometimes seductive programs that have particularly endeared her to men. But the one-time Playboy model modestly shrugs off all the sexy talk.

"I just go out and perform. It's not consciously that I'm trying to be sexy or whatever it is. I just love eing in front of an audience and just performing. That's my nature."

Skating remains Witt's primary focus, but her career spans far beyond the ice. Her German production company, Witt Sports and Entertainment, has produced several European skating events for TV. The Emmy Award-wining actress (for HBO's "Carmen on Ice") also has a movie/skating project of her own in the works, and her jewelry line, Katarina Witt Feelings, is in its fourth year.

"I love being busy. I keep saying, 'I want a break, I want a break.' And I have two days and then I'm getting restless."

Future plans call for Witt's fitness book, written in German and already a European best-seller, to hit the U.S. market.

"It's not a bible on how to be a world-class athlete. It's more about being a woman and being able to stay healthy and stay in shape and feel good about yourself, even with the little flaws maybe everybody has," she said. "I'm not a health guru. I love chocolate. I like a glass of red wine once a while."

A skater since she was 5, Witt dominated the figure skating world in the 1980s as an amateur. She won the World Championships four times and the European Championships six. Her greatest accomplishment is winning back-to-back Olympic gold medals (in 1984 and 1988) - a feat equaled only by one other figure skater, Sonja Henie in 1936.