Pechstein settles accounts with the ARD on five A4 pages
Claudia Pechstein was in Beijing for the eighth time at the Olympics. In the mass start, the 50-year-old finished ninth, she was the German flag bearer at the opening ceremony
Source: dpa/Peter Kneffel
Since her return from the Olympics, Claudia Pechstein has been fighting a duel with ARD. The speed skater excludes the broadcaster from a press round. A controversy that has been smoldering for years is now reaching its climax.
SA farcical argument has been smoldering in German sport for days, which has now suddenly become more acute. On Wednesday evening, Claudia Pechstein’s manager sent an email, first without, then minutes later with an attachment. On the interview boycott of Claudia Pechstein against ARD“ as it was called.
The German speed trainThe buyer “addressed an open letter to the ARD, which has already been emailed to Messrs. Balkausky, Simon and Seppelt”. It is a settlement with the broadcaster, whose sporting management is head of department Axel Balkausky and the team of investigative journalist Hajo Seppelt. Written on five A4 pages. Since Sunday, this controversy had gained more and more momentum.
Pechstein had returned from the Olympic Games in Beijing that day and had to attend a press appointment after her arrival at Frankfurt Airport. A team from ARD was also present, which Pechstein did not go unnoticed. At her behest, the station’s journalists were excluded from the appointment. She only answered questions again when the ARD man’s camera was lowered to the ground. Seppelt then tweeted: “To clarify: Ms. Pechstein is boycotting ARD because my colleagues from the ARD doping editorial team and I did not report about her and suspected doping in the way she thought was appropriate.”
In the days that followed, an exchange of blows broke out, in which the ARD still provided the most moderate duelist and had meanwhile more or less come to terms with Pechstein’s behavior. She has not spoken to the broadcaster “for years because of Hajo Seppelt’s reporting in 2012”. “We accept that,” said sports coordinator Balkausky to the “Tagesspiegel”.
The German Association of Journalists then accused Pechstein of having a “strange understanding of freedom of the press”. Even the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) was no longer quite as lenient. “Basically, athletes decide for themselves whether they give interviews,” it was said about the boycott. However, the DOSB would have “welcomed” it if Pechstein had “solved the situation differently in the spirit of Team D”.
Pechstein blames ARD for not giving her a fair chance
But that’s not what Pechstein wanted, as she documented in her open letter to the broadcaster. She lists her quarrel with ARD chronologically and, as she notes, abbreviated. Beginning with the broadcaster’s email to its manager on January 28, 2012:
“Dear Ms. Pechstein, in the course of our research for the ARD sports show and sport inside (WDR television), we ask you to answer the following questions by Sunday,
January 29, 2012 at 4 p.m.
1. Was your blood taken, UV irradiated and re-injected by the practice of the Erfurt sports physician Andreas Franke?
2. If so, why and how often (approx.) did you have this blood treatment?
3. Were there medical exemptions (TUE) from NADA for this?
4. Have you been questioned by the public prosecutor’s office in Erfurt as a witness in the course of the investigations into sports medicine doctor Andreas Franke?
Kind regards…”
The 50-year-old chief of police primarily blames the ARD and the Seppelt team in particular for not having reported fairly and incorrectly about them in particular and about the Erfurt cause in general. She has been asking for a public apology for this for years.
Pechstein writes of a “blatant lie”
With the boycott at Frankfurt Airport on Sunday, which was made public by ARD, she is now taking up the case again from her point of view in order to “make the sloppy, incorrect, tendentious and defamatory work of your anti-doping editorial team around Hajo Seppelt obvious”. as she wrote. And also asks: “Since when has freedom of the press in the Basic Law covered that we athletes have to give an interview to every medium?”
In relation to the reasons for their boycott, ARD wanted to give the audience an explanation “with an outright lie” as to “why I refuse any interviews”. The reason for her boycott was not the reporting of her three-year doping ban from 2009 to 2011, but what she believed to be false allegations of blood doping.
“It’s not like I’m boycotting all of your broadcasters anyway. I’m in lively contact with RBB and MDR,” said Pechstein. Incidentally, she was already a guest on the MDR talk show “Riverboat” this Friday: “Because one thing still applies: If you treat me fairly, I’m happy to answer questions.”
You can read Pechstein’s letter in its entirety here:
