The great Sports by Brooks alerts us that two-time Olympic gold medal that Katarina Witt is retiring from figure skating. But we also learn that ESPN, in documenting Witt's accomplishments, scrubbed her December 1998 appearance in Playboy from the original AP report. That issue was the second ever to sell out for the magazine (10 points if you can guess the first…answer after the jump) 

The drop-dead gorgeous Ms. Witt posing nude led to her wild popularity on the internet – and no doubt increased attendance for her pro skating appearances.

We expect to see plenty of retrospectives on her career in the MSM (including ESPN) over the next couple days. But if she’d never dropped the towel, do you really think the TV nets would be panting to revel in her career *accomplishments*?

I for one have always thought of figure skating as some old Communist bloc ritual for auctioning off nimble whores that never learned how to play tennis. Kind of like the NFL Combine now, but without the saturated media coverage.

UPDATE: Thanks to inertia53 for the spread link They are as NSFW as they are fantastic.

[Sports by Brooks]

A: Marilyn Monroe, December 1953 (inaugural issue)