Gabriele Seyfert


Gabriele "Gaby" Seyfert is a German former figure skater. She is a two-time World champion, and the 1968 Olympic silver medalist.

Skating career

Seyfert skated for the club SC Karl-Marx-Stadt and represented the GDR. Her coach was her mother Jutta Müller, who also coached 1984 and 1988 Olympic champion Katarina Witt. She was a long-time rival of Peggy Fleming, but never defeated her.
In 1966, after two silver medals at the Europeans and the Worlds, she was voted as “The GDR female athlete of the year." She became the first woman to land a clean triple loop.
Seyfert ended her figure skating career in 1970. Unlike Peggy Fleming, she was not allowed to skate professionally. Offers by Holiday on Ice were refused by East German authorities. She was a Stasi informer under the codename "Perle".
Seyfert turned to coaching, and worked with Anett Pötzsch in the early 1970s. The East German coach hierarchy later transferred Pötzsch to Jutta Müller's group, and Seyfert ended her coaching career.

Personal life

She married ice dancer Eberhard Rüger in 1972 and they had a daughter in 1974. She then married Jochen Messerschmidt. In 2011, she married Egbert Körner.
After ending her coaching career, Seyfert studied languages at university and worked as a professional translator. From 1985 to 1991, she led the ice ballet at the Friedrichstadtpalast in East Berlin, where she also skated occasionally. After the ice ballet was closed, she worked at a service industry business in Berlin. She lives in Berlin-Karow.

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