German top speed skater Pechstein ends her career

Germany’s most successful winter Olympian Claudia Pechstein has ended her speed skating career, she said in a news conference on Monday.

The announcement comes 11 days after the 53-year-old athlete reached a settlement with speed skating ruling body ISU in a doping rules dispute that lasted 16 years and went before the German Constitutional Court.

“That’s enough now. I’ve always said that when it was all over, I would stop. So now I can hang up my skates and call it quits,” Pechstein said.

In the future, she wants to continue as a coach and consultant. “I’ll still be on the ice, but no longer as an athlete.”

Pechstein has won nine Olympic medals, including five gold. She was banned for two years in 2009 for blood doping due to suspicious blood values in her biological passport.

She never failed a doping test and said tests showed that the elevated levels of reticulocytes, were the result of a blood anaemia called spherocytosis which she inherited from her father.

She went to civil courts after the Court of Arbitration in 2011 confirmed the ISU ban, and a Munich regional court suggested a settlement in October after the case was returned to it after nine years via a 2022 ruling by Germany’s Constitutional Court.

Pechstein was suing the ISU for compensation and damages of €8.4 million ($9.12 million). She said the ban imposed for blood doping over suspicious blood levels in her biological passport was unjust.

The ISU said that Pechstein and her father underwent tests at a Swiss hospital where it was determined that “Ms Pechstein has a mild form of dehydrated hereditary stomatocytosis (DHS)”.