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Arnd Peiffer, in Antholz in January 2021
Photo:
GEPA pictures / Jasmin Walter / imago images / GEPA pictures
At some point he'll just do it, said Arnd Peiffer.
Simply put an end to it, from now on, and not with a long run-up like ex-colleague Andrea Henkel, who had been teased with it all winter.
The Olympic champion didn't want that for himself.
Like Henkel, Peiffer was one of the quiet members of the German biathlon team who did not cause much publicity for their person.
And now the moment had come.
Without a farewell race, without Bohei, even before the season finale in Östersund this weekend, Peiffer ended his career.
He probably didn't need this grand finale for himself.
It was the ideal time, he wrote in his few lines on Facebook.
Without drama, almost as matter-of-fact as we have always known him to be.
It was “not an easy decision”, but one that “had long since crystallized”.
Sport shaped him and he didn't want to "miss out on the experience that I was allowed to gain."
Arnd Peiffer, who will turn 34 on Thursday, has now had 13 winters in biathlon.
Most of the time since his World Cup debut in Oberhof in 2009, he has been one of the world's best.
He was world champion five times and won four Olympic medals.
The last win of the season was barely three months ago.
At the World Cup in February, he won silver, the only German individual medal.
It was his 17th overall.
It was not for nothing that his teammates called him "machine".
"It's wonderful to stop feeling competitive," wrote Peiffer.
That was the most important thing to him.
The most beautiful anecdote of his time will probably remain that of his greatest success: the Olympic victory in the sprint of Pyeongchang 2018. The gold was at the end of a day of bad luck.
In the morning he had forgotten the key to the gun safe, then he fell down the stairs, later the firing pin on the gun broke.
Peiffer remained calm in the chaos, as is his way.
In the race he flawlessly prevailed against the seemingly overwhelming competition from Norway and France.
It was his third game after Vancouver and Sochi.
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Peiffer's greatest success: the 2018 Olympic victory in Pyeongchang
Photo: Laci Perenyi / imago images
Surely he could have had the fourth.
But that no longer seemed to appeal to him.
Resigning from competitive sports barely a year before the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing 2022 only looks unusual at first glance.
Peiffer had a difficult relationship with the Games for a long time.
They were associated with great success for him, yes.
But also with bitter disappointments on and off the trail, as an athlete and as a person.
Olympia wouldn't be something that would motivate him to do an extra year, even though he actually didn't want to anymore.
Peiffer said that just a few weeks ago in an NDR interview.
»That it has to get bigger and bigger, that no consideration is given to nature, that a lot of nature was destroyed for sports facilities that were later no longer used.
For me, those are issues that have damaged the myth of the Olympics, ”said Peiffer.
Events are no longer what drives him - just whether his body and mind are still ready.
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Peiffer won his last race in Hochfilzen 2020
Photo: Matthias Schrader / dpa
One could understand the time of the resignation as a final food for thought.
During his active days, Peiffer had repeated this kind of thing.
Whether environmental sins and social cohesion, insults on the Internet or the AfD, which he once called "demagogues and seducers".
Peiffer deals with many topics and often did so in public, it seemed even more so since he became the father of a daughter for the first time in 2018.
The Lower Saxony also repeatedly pointed out grievances in his own sport.
When it came to doping practices, the otherwise calm, reflective Peiffer could sometimes get emotional.
Anyone caught with Epo "forfeited their right to international competitions from my point of view," he once said.
"Nobody can say that I put it in my muesli."
He thought aloud about the boycott of Russian World Cups and did not leave the world federation in good shape after its corruption scandal and doping cover-up.
Peiffer had a clear stance on many things and conveyed this eloquently.
This is not the only reason why he will be absent from biathlon.
After Simon Schempp, Peiffer is already the second veteran who will not be there this coming winter.
This poses problems for the German Ski Association (DSV).
Peiffer was the last active individual Olympic champion in the German team and the only one whose results were mostly reliable.
This winter, the only German individual World Cup medal and five of six podium places in the men's World Cup went to his account - the sixth belonged to his friend and roommate Erik Lesser.
But he's already 32 and recently had some fluctuations, Lesser has not yet commented on his future path.
It is currently unclear who should fill the gap in the team.
Like many winter sports disciplines, German biathlon sport has a problem with young talent.
After the fabulous games in Pyeongchang with seven medals, the Germans are threatened with a lackluster time next year in what is probably their favorite winter sport in Beijing.
From where and from which job Peiffer is watching is still unclear.
With the federal police, he first gets time to train off.
He wants to use it for orientation.
In the DSV, they would like the model athlete to somehow be retained.
Peiffer himself kept his future open for the time being.
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