At the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, under her maiden name of Khadatovich, she competed in her first Olympic Games in the
women's quadruple sculls as part of the
Unified Team at the 1992 Summer Olympics due to the recent
Dissolution of the Soviet Union, winning the bronze medal. Khadatovich began to concentrate her career as a single sculler and by the start of the
1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, she had established herself as a major contender for the
women's Olympic single sculls. She claimed gold, winning the final in a time of 7:32.31. She then won both World Championship gold medals in 1997 and 1999 and married a German, where she took the name
Karsten. She competed at her third Olympic Games in
2000 in
Sydney, where she won gold in the
single sculls event by one hundredth of one second over
Rumyana Neykova of Bulgaria. In 2001, Karsten won the
Princess Royal Challenge Cup at the
Henley Royal Regatta, rowing for the Minsk City Club and defeating German
Katrin Rutschow-Stomporowski in the final. At the
2004 Summer Olympics in
Athens, she won a silver medal in the
single sculls, and a bronze medal at the
2008 Summer Olympics in
Beijing in the
same event. She also won the World Championships in the single sculls in 1997, 1999, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2009, earned silver in 2002 and 2010, and bronze in 2001 and 2003. She won the European Championships in 2009 and 2010. She won the
World Junior Championships in 1990. She reached the final of the
single sculls event at the
2012 Summer Olympics and made it to the semi-finals of the same event at the
2016 Summer Olympics. == See also ==