On, on and on. After the last lap and a short break on a bench on the edge of the oval, Claudia Pechstein set off again on a trot. It was a casual expedition, this time without runners on the feet and accompanied by two colleagues. That was possibly the biggest difference to the previous edition of the individual distance championship in Inzell, before the pandemic, at the same location: At that time, Pechstein was the only one to compete over the 5000 meter distance under the white wave roof of the ice rink. Now at least five competitors had registered, but the result was the same as it has always been in recent years. First place for Claudia Pechstein.
For the ninth time in a row she dominated the national track on Saturday. It was her 41st German championship title. She had collected number 40 just the day before, in the 3000 meter competition. Claudia Pechstein is 49 years old, an exception worldwide with her unique selling point as perpetual motion machine of speed skating; and since she still does not show the slightest signs of fatigue when spinning on skates, an expansion of her extensive title collection was almost to be expected this winter as well. But what is astonishing is the short time in which she whizzed the five kilometers on Saturday, 7: 06.67 minutes. The runner-up, Michelle Uhrig from Berlin, 24 years younger than Pechstein, needed 7: 22.26 minutes: These are worlds on the mirror-smooth track.
Pechstein is 49 years old, she calls her competitors “young chickens”
“Somehow great”, Pechstein thought of her 41st title when she was interviewed exclusively by the press spokesman of the national association DESG in front of a video camera. The fact that the competition is unable to keep up with a 49-year-old also gives the five-time Olympic champion pause. She said: “The distance to the young chickens is extreme again.” Pechstein actually sees the association’s squad runners as chicks – just as she had revealed the day before that an almost fifty-year-old had long since been retired in a speed skating nation like the Netherlands: “In Holland, I think I would have been a pensioner for 15 years.” However, she also congratulated the “young chickens” because they “presented themselves”, as she said. Because they competed in the agony of the long distance at all: “We also need offspring on the long edges.”
The generation change that the association is striving for under the new presidium of Matthias Große, Pechstein’s partner, is far from complete; Patrick Beckert, 31, already the winner of the 5000 meters, also prevailed over the 10,000 meter distance on Saturday. “A changing of the guard has not yet taken place, that’s true,” said the new sports director Nadine Seidenglanz. Nevertheless, she believes that the DESG is in an “upward trend”: “You can see that in the number of participants, for example the men in the sprint or the women over 5000 meters. We now have a broader field – but there is still a lot of work to be done US.”
And so Claudia Pechstein is already preparing for the next tasks: She is aiming for the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, it would be her eighth. On, on and on. In any case, she has already qualified for the first two World Cup competitions of the winter with championship titles 40 and 41.