TIPPING POINT:This space rarely needs an excuse to perv but this morning there's a reason: happy birthday, Katarina Witt, the beautiful face of socialism, as Time once described her, and at a time when it wasn't reduced to putting inconsequential freckly west of Ireland men on the cover.

Nowadays Katarina is best known for judging Dancing on Ice, a profile vehicle for gormless celebrity on the make.

That is now. But there was a then, a time when the stereotypical East German female athlete could only sell magazines door-to-door and was notable only for making her male colleagues look feminine.

But the young Katarina was beautiful, a genuine shout-out-loud cracker. She skated to Olympic glory in 1984 and 1988 on a wave of global testosterone that combined awe at her talent with some rather more primal instincts.

In the process she achieved crossover status into public consciousness with all the apparent ease with which she once moved across ice. There was even a Playboy spread, disgustingly exploitative, of course, tut-tut, and offensive to all right-thinking people, but only the famous debut Marilyn Monroe edition sold more.

Anyway, Katarina is 47 today. It hardly seems possible. But that’s time for you. And she still looks great.

Anyway you can hardly get more mainstream than passing verdict on slebs clinging on to their skate mentors only marginally less tightly than they clasp onto their self-regard.

In contrast to the real thing, skating as actual athletic achievement, rather than ratings grabber, is much further down the dial, on “Trevor+1, excuse-us-while-we-shake-the-dish-back-to-life, HD-lite”.

Skating’s ISU Grand Prix Final for 2012 is being held this week in Sochi. That’s the city on the Black Sea that will host the 2014 Winter Olympics. No, I’d never heard of it either. The Caucasus are nearby for the skiers to fall down in just over a year’s time, but this week’s Grand Prix will be an important test run of the Olympic skating set-up.

Even 30 years ago this would have been only of marginal interest in this part of the world; certainly not mainstream in a country where a couple of inches of snow grinds everything to a halt. But not completely ignored either.

The Brits had a long tradition of producing top-flight performers on the ice and believed in covering them. Curry, Cousins, and Torvill and Dean were names as recognisable here as they were there.

But that was then. The Brits haven’t had a popular and successful skater in a long time. And platoons of mostly anonymous Russian, Korean and Lithuanian medallists don’t cut it ratings-wise.

In fact if it didn’t involve Nancy Kerrigan’s knee, a tyre-iron, and a chippy redneck, figure-skating didn’t feature on most anyone’s radar.

So what would figure-skating give for Katarina in her pomp today?

Probably an across-the-board 6.0 – if the famous old judging system still existed: except it doesn’t.

After the 2002 Olympics debacle, which saw judges accused of blatant cheating in the pairs event, a new calculation was introduced that brought a more systematic approach, but which also placed more emphasis on technical expertise.

From a judge’s point of view, you can see the advantage: a competitor either nails a particular manoeuvre or doesn’t. But it’s that very approach that could make a young Katarina an also-ran if she competed now. And if that isn’t a fatal condemnation of a system, then I don’t know what is.

At its best, skating can make the fuzzy line between sport and art blurrier than almost anything else. The athletic temperament required to perfect the requisite technique balances as precariously as any blade, alongside the grace required to transmit something even greater than the physical to an audience.

But it could be done. At her best Katarina managed it. So did Janet Lynn before her. The sadness now is that the intangible doesn’t seem to be required any more.

Maybe it’s the curse of modern sport. In an age when athleticism and attitude dominate, it’s possibly naive to expect more. Even the current world men’s champion, Patrick Chan, has said skating used to be more “epic”. There was a tangible individuality among the skaters, he argues, something even the uninitiated could twig.

But now the way a routine is measured also determines the way it is performed. There are many coaches who appreciate that, in the way that coaches in most sports appreciate skills that can be taught. But an unfortunate by-product of that is how much of the soul has been removed. Not coincidentally, so has much of skating’s television audience.

By trying to fix the problem of subjective judges, the problem of too much objective performance has been created.

“Figure skating is a different kind of sport,” Katarina has said. “You cannot compare it to swimming, which is about who’s the fastest. Skating is about who touches your heart.”

Kati can still manage that. It’s a lot less certain the sport she adorned can do the same.