Claudia Pechstein is fighting against the World Ice Skating Association. She explains in court how much fraud allegations have influenced her.
Claudia Pechstein (52) explained to the Munich Higher Regional Court how much fraud allegations made many years ago had influenced her. According to media reports, the long-standing legal dispute over a doping ban for the speed skater and five-time Olympic champion has still not come to an end on Thursday in Munich.
The matter, which involves compensation for pain and suffering and damages amounting to several million euros, . Pechstein had sued the world ice skating association ISU because of what she believed was an unfair doping ban and has been fighting for her reputation using legal means for around 15 years now.
The association banned Pechstein in 2009 due to abnormal blood values, but the athlete always denied the doping allegations and explained it as an inherited blood anomaly. the “longest legal case in sports history”.
Pechstein has been tested more than 700 times
“5,837 days ago I found out that something in my body was not the norm,” Pechstein said in court in Munich, according to “Welt”. She was accused of doping for ten years. “The thought that everyone thought I was a fraud drove me crazy. For days I couldn’t eat, I cried, I was desperate,” she continued. Pechstein said that she wanted to commit suicide, which fortunately she didn’t do. She “fought against injustice. Injustice, that’s what was done to me.”
Pechstein was tested more than 700 times, even though she “never doped, never manipulated.” “Yet my house was searched, my computer confiscated, my phone tapped, everything without finding a single piece of evidence against me. How?” The athlete was reportedly open to a settlement, but this did not happen in court on October 24th.
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Source: Stern
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