Marika Kilius

Marika Kilius, the daughter of a hairdresser, was born on 24 March 1943 in Frankfurt am Main, Hessen. In 1964, she married Werner Zahn, the son of a factory owner from Frankfurt am Main. The couple divorced thirteen years later, and Kilius also divorced her second husband after four years. She has two children, Sascha and Melanie Schäfer, and as of May 2005, two grandchildren.

Kilius began as a singles skater but picked up pairs very early. Her first partner was Franz Ningel. They placed fourth at the 1956 Olympics and won the silver medal at the 1957 World Championships. Kilius was still a child when she was paired with Ningel, who was more than six years her senior. By 1957 she had grown to be taller than her partner, which caused problems on their lifts, so the team split up. For a time following her split with Ningel, Kilius competed in artistic roller skating as a singles skater. She was the World Roller ladies' champion in 1958. Afterward, Kilius began skating with Hans-Jürgen Bäumler under the tutelage of Erich Zeller. They won the German Championships after being paired together for only six weeks. Between 1958 and 1964, they won the German Championships four times, European Championships six times and the World Championships two times. Their first World title, in 1963, followed the cancellation of the 1961 event due to the crash of Sabena Flight 548 and a collision during their performance at the 1962 World Figure Skating Championships that forced them to withdraw because part of Kilius's skate broke off. Kilius and Bäumler also captured the silver medal at the Olympics twice, in 1960 and 1964. Their silver medal at the 1964 Olympics caused controversy at the time, as many of the spectators were German and felt that the pair were marked unfairly low, though they had not skated as well as usual at either that competition or the preceding 1964 German Championships. Threatening letters were sent to the event officials, with Suzanne Morrow Francis a particular target due to the low marks she gave the couple, although they were in line with other scores she gave during the competition. After their loss at the Olympics, the pair considered not competing at the 1964 World Championships, but they were persuaded to do so by Kilius's friend Thomas Fritsch. They created a new free skate for the competition; for the middle part, they copied the program of the Olympic gold medalists, Ludmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov. The pair won the competition and retired from competitive skating to turn professional. Both skaters had signed professional contracts and skated as professionals with Holiday on Ice before the 1964 Olympics, a violation of their amateur status and strict IOC rules. In 1966, because the team had signed a professional skating contract before the 1964 Winter Olympics – against the rules at the time – they were stripped of the medal. As the New York Times reported, "prodded by two German members, the IOC "quietly re-awarded the West Germans their silver medals in 1987, 23 years after the Innsbruck Games, at an executive board meeting in Istanbul. The couple was deemed 'rehabilitated.'" Kilius was voted the German female athlete of the year in 1959.