Claudia Pechstein will lead the German Olympic team into the stadium in Beijing, flag in hand. For the 49-year-old, this is the high point of her career. And that despite the fact that she is a historic sports personality in two ways. And not loved by everyone.
Claudia Pechstein is Germany’s most successful Winter Olympian. The Berliner won Olympic gold five times, two silver medals and two bronze medals complete her valuable collection of precious metals. The great speed skater became world champion six times. Pechstein won his first Olympic medal in 1992: bronze in Albertville. The list of great sporting successes is long, almost unmanageable. But Pechstein can clearly name her greatest success. She only ran it in the winter of 2021, deep in the late autumn of her great career. It was an eleventh place at a World Cup.
“This is the absolute highlight of my sporting career,” said Pechstein after the mass start in Calgary. This is only surprising at first glance, because the placement made history possible: With a placement under fernen, actually unworthy of a multiple Olympic champion, the 49-year-old met the norm for her record games. “When it was clear that I could take part in the Olympics for the eighth time, I could have embraced the whole world.” Eight Olympic participations: No female athlete has ever had the opportunity to represent her country at the most important sporting event in the world.
“Worth more than Olympic medals”
Now she will lead the German team together with bobsleigh pilot Francesco Friedrich: Athletes and fans chose the feisty sportswoman to carry the German flag into the stadium at the opening ceremony. Behind them will gather numerous athletes who could be their children. Who weren’t even born when Pechstein started at the Olympics for the first time. “It’s an I point in my career. It’s worth more to me than all my Olympic medals,” said Pechstein after being named leader of the German team. “I’ve won everything there is to win in my career and to be able to carry the flag for Team Germany as a record Olympic competitor makes me very proud.”
There is almost no alternative to her choice, she won with 37.43 percent of the votes ahead of snowboarder Ramona Hofmeister (34.52) and tobogganist Natalie Geisenberger (28.06), after all a four-time gold medalist. She is “all the more pleased that I got a win here,” said Pechstein, the great competitor. Half of the flag bearers were chosen by the athletes of the German team and half by fans.
Pechstein is undoubtedly one of the greatest Olympian personalities on the German team, and her achievements are historic. That she will lead the team strengthens her own personal Olympic Truce. The German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) had given its athletes and winter sports fans a choice of six athletes who “embody a fair and manipulation-free competitive sport not only with their successes, but also with their personality and attitude”, as the association put it in its established nomination criteria.
“Almost took my life”
Anyone who only follows the Olympic sport every four years could become suspicious. Because Pechstein’s name is not only associated with countless successes and historical achievements. The athlete has also been fighting allegations of manipulation for many years. Or more precisely: Against the effects of a ban because of doping. The IBU, the world speed skating association, banned her for two years in 2009 because Pechstein was convicted of blood doping based on evidence. The 49-year-old explained the critical values with an inherited blood anomaly. “It makes me angry, but it’s also motivation. I’m still able to perform even though two years have been stolen from me. I lost everything financially, almost killed myself, was at rock bottom. I had to pay lawyers, to prove my innocence,” she explains of her struggle of the past 13 years. The allegations have long since been invalidated, but she is still officially considered a doping offender.
“I said even then: If you find a positive doping sample from me, I’ll stop immediately. But that never happened because I didn’t dope,” she explained in an interview with RTL / ntv in February 2021. “I’ve been fighting against my unjust ban since 2009. It’s a scandal.” The DOSB jumped to Pechstein’s side in early 2015: “All experts came to the conclusion that Claudia Pechstein’s blood counts and erythrocyte characteristics do not provide evidence of doping,” said Wolfgang Jelkmann, director of the Institute of Physiology from the University of Lübeck, the then DOSB President Alfons Hörmann.
“The experts we asked for advice came to a clear conclusion. Then there are many question marks in the Pechstein case,” Hörmann explained to the public accordingly. Pechstein rejoiced: “Mr. Hörmann apologized on behalf of the German Olympic Sports Confederation. The medical commission found that I was a victim – I’ve always known it. I think that I’m now rehabilitated before German sport.”
Two years ago, however, she failed before the International Court of Arbitration for Sport CAS, which rejected her appeal against the verdict. With her world association, the German flag bearer is still in a state of war: a claim for damages is pending before the Federal Constitutional Court. “I will fight to the end and if I have to go to the European Court of Justice, I will go there,” said the athlete recently. The nomination and later the election as the flag bearer is not only a sign of great respect for the sporting lifetime achievement, but a further step towards sustainable rehabilitation in the consciousness of the German sports public. One whose radiance can hardly be greater.
“It doesn’t matter what others think of me”
Pechstein, with his usual openness, which is beyond any diplomacy, has absolutely no illusions that she is really there. “I’m quite satisfied, although I had a little snag in my run. If you want to go to the Olympics, you have to run well at the German championships and have the young chickens under control. And I managed that quite well,” said Pechstein after im October after her 40th German championship title. However, the distance to the competition makes them a bit questionable. “But that’s been the case for at least ten years. In Holland I would definitely have been a pensioner for 15 years, but the boys have to train hard and try to beat Pechstein,” said the oldest German top athlete.
In the domestic association, her partner Matthias Große has the say as president. Since the summer of 2020, he has been putting the German speed skating and short track community “back on track” – at least that’s how Pechstein sees it. She is convinced: “If he hadn’t become president, the association would have had to shut down. We have more sponsors again and the coordination with the federal donors is working again.” After the election, the sporting director had to leave and national coach Erik Bouwman lost his job. Bouwman had previously described Grosse’s candidacy as president of the association as a “joke” in a general statement and stated that most runners in the team “find Pechstein sick”. His statements “didn’t deserve a beauty award, but they had to be said,” Bouwman later admitted. The result was the dismissal of the national coach. No one from the ranks of athletes commented publicly on Pechstein.
No, Pechstein is not a favorite of officials. She is combative and does not shy away from fights off the ice. In the Bundestag elections in September, the athlete ran in Berlin for entry into the Bundestag. In the constituency of crowd favorite Gregor Gysi. Even if the left-wing politician lost votes, he clearly won the direct mandate in Treptow-Köpenick. The record Olympian was not prominently placed on her party’s state list. So continue speed skating instead of political egg dance. “I don’t care what others think of me. I know that I have a reputation for not being the most likeable, but anyone who knows me knows that I’m a happy person,” said Pechstein recently in a long portrait of the RBB. “I’m happy when people tell me at autograph sessions that I’m easygoing and that they can steal horses with me.”
“If you do your best, everything is fine”
Her Olympic qualification hung by a thread up to the last curve of the last World Cup relevant to the provision of the norm. Once she had to finish in the top 15. In the mass start, Pechstein, the big one, was already on the verge of being eliminated. A competitor had pushed her away and thus taken her out of the race. If the judges had not observed the incident, the dream of the Olympics would have been shattered. But Pechstein was allowed to start in the final and drove a well-considered race, far away from the crowd at the front.
She collected important points in the intermediate sprints, but stayed out of the rest. Anyone who has collected Olympic gold five times knows when it’s worth staying in front – and when not. “That plays a role in my head, but I really wanted to do it. The placement didn’t matter to me at all,” Pechstein analyzed her precision landing in eleventh place for the Olympic pilot. And pushed quite aggressively afterwards: “It’s a shame that some then claimed that I couldn’t have run anymore. They probably didn’t understand the tactics in speed skating.”
The Olympic motto, which is alien to most competitive athletes and according to which being there is everything, has largely been adopted by Pechstein for himself. She has already won by taking part, on the ice single-digit placings would be a big surprise given the concentrated international class.
Looking forward to the “goosebump moment”
Even if a lot can happen in the mass start at the end of the games. “That’s true, but I’m still a realist and I say that I can no longer win an Olympic medal,” emphasized the Berliner, who celebrated her Olympic debut 30 years ago in the French Alpine town of Albertville. “The fact that I can no longer run for medals,” she said last winter RTL / ntv, “is not bad at all, and it never was. When you do your best, everything is good, and when others are better , then that’s the way it is. You can’t subscribe to victories, and it’s good that that doesn’t work in sport.”
Now Pechstein will march into the stadium for only the second time with the German team. She last attended the opening ceremony in 1992, when for the first time an all-German team competed for medals at the Olympic Games. “I will absolutely enjoy competing with the team,” she said. Most of the time she had to do without this “goosebump moment” because the competitions always started on the other day.
Same this time, but this time it doesn’t matter. The long-distance specialist will be contesting her first competition on Saturday. You will still enjoy the march. “It’s pure emotion, it’s pure motivation. Your legs may not be fresh, but your head is fresh,” she said, looking ahead to the upcoming 3,000 meters. Only on the penultimate day of the Olympics does Pechstein start in the mass start race. Claudia Pechstein celebrates her 50th birthday three days after her last Olympic race.
Meanwhile, the eighth games do not have to be the last. “When we were getting dressed for Beijing, some of our colleagues already said: see you in four years! But maybe it was just gallows humor that was meant positively,” Pechstein recently told the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit”. “Now let’s go to Beijing first, then I’ll celebrate my 50th birthday and then we’ll talk about everything else, okay?”