Between 1984 and 1988, Witt won ten gold medals from eleven major international events, making her one of the most successful figure skaters ever.

At the 1981 World Championships, she placed 1st in the short, 3rd in the long, and 2nd in the combined free skate, missing a medal due to low placement in figures.

However, she stepped out of three jumps, including the legendary triple flip, the complex element she was the very first woman to accomplish, and a relatively easy double axel, which cost her the long program win and the overall gold medal.

The next season, she won her first European title but finished off the World podium in fourth place, because she was 8th in compulsory figures despite winning the combined free skating.

In 1984, Witt was voted "GDR Female Athlete of the Year" by the readers of the East German newspaper Junge Welt.

Witt and Sumners held the top two spots heading into the Olympic free skate, which was worth fifty percent of the total score.

Witt landed three triple jumps in her free skate program, and the judges left room for Sumners to win the event.

The judges left room for Chin to win the long program and event, but unfortunately she fell on a double axel and did not complete a triple salchow in her performance, settling for the bronze medal.

Witt's longstanding gold-medal dominance of the sport was finally disrupted when in an upset she placed second to American Debi Thomas, the new United States Champion, the following year.

At those Worlds, she did win the long program over Thomas's clean skate with identical content, scoring two 6.0s for artistic impression, but a combination miss which left her 4th in the short cost her the gold.

She had been considering making the 1986 World Championships her final event, but stung by the loss, Witt vowed to regain her title and skate on to Calgary.

Although Witt finished fifth in compulsory figures, which meant that Thomas could finish second in both the short and long programs and still retain the World title, Thomas' 7th place in the short program (due to a small hand down on her double axel) put the two skaters on a level playing field ahead of the free skate.

She was expected to be in a fierce three-person fight for only two spots on the German Olympic team with both young rising star Tanja Szewczenko and veteran Marina Kielmann, who was almost the same age as Witt.

Her free program to the music "Sag mir wo die Blumen sind" (an arrangement of the Pete Seeger folksong "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?")

"[8] In 1994, Witt published her autobiography Meine Jahre zwischen Pflicht und Kür (My Years between Compulsories and Freestyle).

She starred in a German-language film called Die Eisprinzessin - The Ice Princess, providing the vocals for the theme song, "Skate with Me".

Witt said she did not care for the "cute, pretty, ice princess image" of figure skaters and wanted to "change people's perceptions".

She was invited to Istanbul as an honoured guest for the skating competition TV show called Buzda Dans ("Dance on Ice") on 25 February 2007.

On 3 December 2011, Witt was confirmed as a judge on the UK TV show Dancing on Ice, where she made her first appearance on 8 January 2012.

[12][13] In January 2013, Witt appeared on German TV in her first leading role, playing a figure skater who is pursued by a stalker.

The made-for-television movie The Stalker [de] thus has autobiographical elements, as Witt herself had been stalked in the United States 20 years earlier.

[14][15] Following the dissolution of East Germany, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Stasi) files were found to show that the secret police had worked hard to keep Witt from defecting by giving her cars, accommodations, and permitted travel.