Ekaterina Karsten

It only took two years for Karsten to become a national champion. In 1989, at the age of seventeen, Karsten won a gold medal at the Belarussian Junior Championships. A year later she won first place for single sculls at the All Soviet Union Championships and the Junior World Championships. In 1991 she won a bronze medal for double sculls at the World Championships. This was the last year she competed for the Soviet Union because the union of nations broke up after the fall of communism in Europe in the early 1990s.

Karsten made her Olympic debut in 1992 in Barcelona, Spain. She competed as a member of the Unified Team of Soviet States and she won a bronze medal in the quad scull. Karsten continued to compete after the 1992 Olympics, but she did not win any championships. In 1993 she placed seventh in the double sculls at the World Championships, and the following year she finished fifth in the same event. In 1995 Karsten finished seventh in the single sculls at the World Championships.