FISU Story: Introducing Maria-Katharina Herceg, the future of German Figure Skating

I’ve been skating now since I was four or five years old, and it was all because of my best friend. Her mother read an article in the newspaper saying that there was a possibility to learn ice skating, and because she didn’t want to learn alone she asked me to come along with her, so I did, I tried it out, and that’s how I started.

Maria skates very, very well. And she has extraordinary skating style. She has a great feeling for the edge of the blade and she trains really well. And also her jumps – she has a lot of control and they are of very high quality. But on the other hand the triple flip and the triple lutz, well there’s still a slight lack of technical ability there if she wants to be among the world’s very best. But she’s doing very, very high quality work.

My strength I think is how I express myself on the ice, she said. Several people have told me already that it’s a pleasure for them to watch me skating. I think maybe my weakness is that I’m too brain orientated. It means that if I’m not doing something simply then sometimes I can get confused.