During the Winter Olympics of Calgary in 1988, two major figures of figure skating confronted each other. On one side, the East German Katarina Witt, on the other the American Debi Thomas. They were the two favorites, it was probably their last Olympic Games and there was a scandal : the two athletes chose to carry out their long program using the opera Carmen by Bizet, thus providing a nickname to this duel "the battle of the Carmens"