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Jutta Müller (right) at Katarina Witt's side at the 1988 Olympic gold medal

Photo: Werner Schulze / IMAGO

Long-time figure skating coach Jutta Müller has died. She died at the age of 94 in a nursing home in Bernau near Berlin, as her daughter Gaby Seyfert confirmed to the German Press Agency. Initially, the MDR had reported on it.

Müller was considered one of the most successful ice skating coaches in the world. From the mid-sixties onwards, protégés of the Chemnitz native won almost 60 gold, silver and bronze medals at international competitions in three decades. Müller celebrated Olympic victories with Anett Pötzsch (1980) and Katarina Witt (1984/1988). With her daughter, Müller won Olympic silver and two world championship titles. "With her passing, the figure skating world has lost one of its greatest coaching personalities," said Andreas Wagner, President of the German Ice Skating Union.

"She recognized talent and was driven not to waste it," Witt once said of her strict and authoritarian coach. "There was certainly a great deal of her own ambition in her. But in such a way that she felt responsible to get the best out of it together with the athlete." She was a passionate coach who "actually only thought about figure skating and left nothing to chance".

Witt saw it all the way to the end

Witt supported her teacher until the end, even though she was always a close reference person for her. "Everyone asks us, 'You still say you?' Yes, I always will! For me, Mrs. Müller is always Mrs. Müller. Out of respect! And yet she's very close to me," Witt had said at the coach's 90th birthday. Without them, I would never have achieved this global career," Witt said.

"I demanded a lot and gave a lot," Müller, who began her coaching career in 1955 at SC Karl-Marx-Stadt, once said. "I've taken care of everything. We were a unit." Witt was strong enough to grow up as a personality next to the always elegantly dressed coach with the black bun. It was more difficult for Seyfert. She didn't always feel comfortable in the daughter role at the side of the strong coach of the century.

She took advantage of the opportunities offered by GDR sports

"She embodied these successes of the GDR, she knew how to produce success," said Udo Dönsdorf, former DEU sports director, Jutta Müller. "And the GDR system was made for her, offering her every opportunity because figure skating had the touch of dazzling."

Müller herself became GDR champion in pair skating. The city of Chemnitz made her an honorary citizen, and in 2004 she was inducted into the Hall of Fame of figure skaters.

mfu/dpa