The Battle of the Carmens is an informal name given to a figure skating rivalry and "media-fed battle"[1] between East German Katarina Witt and American Debi Thomas during the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.
The competition is so named because both Witt and Thomas independently elected to skate to the music of Bizet's opera Carmen in their respective long programs.
Both skaters had performed very well at the 1987 World Figure Skating Championships (Witt won, with Thomas placing a close second), so it was expected that the duel for Olympic gold in 1988 would constitute a showdown between these two women.
[3] The only standing ovations given were to Elizabeth Manley and Japanese skater Midori Ito, both of whom skated clean long programs which were more technically difficult than either Witt's or Thomas's long programs.
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