On safe skates: Ice skating veteran and CDU member Claudia Pechstein at the Olympic Winter Games (Beijing, February 19, 2022)
Sprinter Nico Ihle didn’t even make it into the top ten at the speed skating world championships last weekend in Hamar/Norway. The Chemnitz native had to make do with 13th place in the sprinters, as did Claudia Pechstein from Berlin in the all-rounders. The fact that a woman, who ran for the Berlin CDU for the Bundestag, is allowed to represent the colors of the German Speed Skating Association (DESG) – it was the total of 25 World Championships for the 50-year-old – basically says everything regarding the meanwhile underground level of the black and red and gold ice skating section »long runners«. In Beijing, the flag-bearer at the Pechstein opening ceremony, taking part in her eighth Olympics, achieved the best DESG result with 9th place in the mass start.
Tortured enough
Have the younger ones, the generations following Pechstein, tormented themselves enough in recent years, were they too comfortable in the weight room or too untalented that they still can’t stand up to her or run past her? It is indicative of the overall situation at the DESG, with first-class external conditions and a more than sufficient number of covered ice rinks in Berlin, Erfurt and Inzell, that the former world-class sprinter Jenny Wolf gave up in frustration in December 2020 following only a few weeks as the responsible national coach. Wolf preferred not to answer the obvious question of why Claudia Pechstein is still ahead of her colleagues and may even be aiming for an Olympic participation in Milan in 2026. »I will definitely not comment on this sport once more. I’m done with speed skating,’ she explained jW-Inquiry and signaled: The former flagship sport seems to be an almost hopeless case from a top-level sporting point of view.
The »figure skating« section on the ice has also fallen into oblivion, the level of which can once once more be admired at the World Championships from March 21st to 27th in Montpellier. Even without the suspended squad of Russian skating artists, there will be nothing to harvest for the starters of the German Skating Union (DEU) in southern France, as was the case at the Winter Games in Beijing. In the men’s category nobody qualified, in the women’s category Nicole Schott from Mannheim took 17th place. It’s better to keep quiet regarding results in pairs, in ice dancing and in teams.
In the ice sports »Art« and »Schnell«, German participants can only dream of the international precious metal. An unprecedented historical crash. From the late 1950s with Marika Kilius and Hans-Jürgen Bäumler to the 1990s with superstar Katarina Witt, from Erhard Keller’s Olympic victory in 1968 to Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann and Anni Friesinger, they are something of a guarantee of success and media »street sweepers« Representatives with the jagged front or the long “asparagus runners” on their skates now have no chance. Of course, things might get even worse in the near future, in Beijing they were at least allowed to be part of the German team.
In figure skating, pair skater Aljona Savchenko, who moved from Ukraine in 2003, had long whitewashed her gradual descent from the world elite by initially skating with Robin Szolkowy until his career ended in 2014, winning five world championship gold medals and two Olympic bronze medals. Subsequently, the Chemnitz resident with Bruno Massot in 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea, even won the Olympics and in the same year also the world championship title. After that, Savchenko, who became a mother in 2019, and Massot parted ways. The once highly decorated German sport of figure skating now stands naked, so to speak.
Reinhard Ketterer, DEU Vice-President for Competitive Sports, calls this development “questionable”. The main reason for this is that training times are not adequately available in the midday and early followingnoon hours, which are so important for teenagers. “The all-day school throws a big spanner in the works for us,” reports the experienced official, who used to experience far better times as a private figure skating instructor at home in Garmisch. Not to mention East German conditions, when even fourth graders practiced 20 hours a week with highly trained trainers and their workload was optimally coordinated with their 30 weekly school hours. The relegation began when the West German officials following the “Wende” dumped a trainer icon like Jutta Müller, now 93 years old, coldly. She was probably too good for them.
“As a result, we now train less than we used to,” confirms Falko Kirsten, Vice President of the Saxon Ice Skating Association. For the 58-year-old, five times East German champion in the 1980s and just as often at a World Cup with 12th or 13th place, 30 hours of training per week was “a minimum” during his time as an active player. In the meantime the world has moved on to quadruple jumps and power-sapping combinations, but the weekly program has been scaled back. Among other things, because there are constant scuffles with the short trackers and the ice hockey players in the halls, for example at Kirsten’s home in Dresden, for the best ice times.
Minister of Education on the ice
The two insiders are of the opinion that the misery cannot be pinned down to the reservoir of young ice skaters. Rather, the qualitative factor would be important, that is, for talents to follow individual paths very early on, for example via online lessons, as has long been the norm with successful international competition in the USA or in Russia, even over great distances. Unfortunately, this is not possible in the German education system – apart from corona exceptions – for school-age athletes. Reason enough to perhaps ask the state ministers of education to come out on the ice and describe the problem to them first-hand. And what regarding the concentration of talent at individual locations, as required by the competitive sports reform of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB)? For figure skating, say Ketter and Kirsten in unison, that can’t be a way. Especially in the artistic-aesthetic-compositional sports, the squad athletes are still very young and should not be separated too early from their usual environment, i.e. parents, family and training group.