Recently, Yekaterina Karsten won a place at the coming Olympics in Rio de Janeiro: the seventh of her career. She was the first sportswoman to bring Olympic victory to sovereign Belarus, with gold medals from the Games in Atlanta in 1996 and in Sydney in 2000.
She currently lives and trains in Germany, so Belteleradiocompany’s camera crew went to Dormagen to meet Yekaterina during her training, for an interview. She chatted about her past years’ successes and shared her plans for the future: her goal of winning another Olympic medal. Journalists were able to meet Ms. Karsten’s family, who chat at home in Russian, and she noted that she hopes to return to Belarus after finishing her career.
“We wanted to cover her whole career: from her days as a village girl, Katya Khodotovich, to the great athlete in academic rowing. No Belarusian has ever remained so long in the sporting limelight. We’ve been to Germany, and we’ve visited Ms. Karsten’s homeland of the Krupki District, meeting her first coach in Minsk, looking at archive records,” notes the director of the film, Nikolay Stulo.
By Igor Leshin
