Tanja Szewczenko

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Tanja Szewczenko (born July 26, 1977, Düsseldorf, Germany) was a successful German figure skater. Standing five feet four and a half inches (1.64 m), she no longer skates competitively, but now concentrates on modelling and acting.

Her prominent success occurred in the mid-nineties where she won a bronze medal in the 1994 World Figure Skating Championships. After finishing 6th place at the 1996 World Figure Skating Championships, Szewczenko contracted a near-deadly combination of viral infections that took her out of competition for nearly two years.

She made a successful comeback in the fall of 1997, winning on home ice at Sparkassen Cup on Ice in Gelsenkirken, Germany over eventual World Champion, Irina Slutskaya. She went on to defeat former World Champion Lu Chen and eventual World Champion Maria Butyrskaya at the NHK Trophy in Nagano, Japan, and in doing so, earned a spot to the Champions Series Final of Figure Skating in Munich, Germany. She finished 2nd behind American Tara Lipinski in what is regarded as the greatest performance of her career.

Szewczenko was favored to win a medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano; unfortunately she contracted the flu which prevented her from competing. Four years earlier at the Lillehammer Games, she collided with Oksana Baiul during warm-ups prior to the free skate.

Szewczenko also won a bronze medal at the 1998 European Figure Skating Championships in Milan, Italy. She also finished 9th at the 1998 World Figure Skating Championships in Minneapolis, Minnesota later that year.

She posed for the German edition of Playboy magazine in April of 1999.

Szewczenko officially retired from competitive figure skating in 2000.

Beginning in 2002, Szewczenko played the role of Katinka "Kati" Ritter on the German soap opera "Unter Uns." Her last appearance on the soap was December 5, 2005.

In September 2006 she started acting in the German soap opera "Alles was zählt" (All that Counts) on RTL Television. She plays the role of Diana Sommer, an inline courier, who is given the chance to train as a figure skater alongside the wealthy daughter of a fitness center mogul.