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Pentathlete Annika Schleu (right) wants to continue until the Olympic Games in Paris.
Photo: Marijan Murat / dpa
After the scandal in the modern pentathlon at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Annika Schleu wants to continue her career.
"I don't want to be remembered like that," the 31-year-old told Die Zeit.
She wanted to "just do it better and work towards better handling of the horses."
The affair initially shocked her, there was this “all social media hate”, “I received death threats.
That was terrible," Schleu said.
However, she rejected the idea of ending her career.
"It became clear to me relatively quickly that stopping couldn't be a solution," she said: "I'm continuing to train to take part in the Olympic Games one last time, in 2024 in Paris."
"Hardest day of my sporting career"
Schleu had been on course for gold in Tokyo.
However, in show jumping, the horse Saint Boy, who had been drawn to her, refused to obey.
In tears, she tried to bring the animal back into the course with spurs and whip.
The public prosecutor's office in Potsdam had recently dropped an investigation "due to alleged violations of the Animal Welfare Act".
Since then, she has dealt intensively with the incidents on the course, said Schleu, who wants to start a traineeship as a biology and sports teacher in February parallel to sports.
“I made wrong decisions.
I had to deal with that first.
The day in Tokyo was the hardest day of my sporting career, if not my life,” admitted the pentathlete.
The world association UIPM had already taken action and announced that it would remove show jumping from the pentathlon programme.
After the 2024 Summer Games in Paris, the discipline is to be replaced by a new one.
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