Pechstein appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, describing the prosecution as a first-of-its-kind doping case based entirely on circumstantial evidence. No banned drug was ever detected in her repeated samples. In November 2009, however, CAS upheld the suspension, concluding that the expert evidence did not establish the inherited condition Pechstein claimed could explain the blood readings. She pursued emergency legal relief in Switzerland and was permitted to race once in Salt Lake City on 11 December 2009, but her 13th-place finish was not enough to qualify her for Vancouver. The Swiss Federal Supreme Court refused to suspend the ban, and a CAS panel at the Vancouver Games rejected her final appeal on 19 February 2010. Pechstein also filed a criminal complaint alleging trial fraud against the ISU. Later that year, hematologist Gerhard Ehninger argued that a mild inherited form of spherocytosis might account for the abnormalities, but the Swiss court issued a final ruling on 28 September 2010 confirming the ban. The suspension cost Pechstein her competitive prime, contributed to severe personal and professional strain—including a reported nervous breakdown—and ended with her return to racing in February 2011. The legal fallout continued for years: German courts initially rejected her damages claim, but Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court ruled in 2022 that her fundamental rights had been violated, sending the damages case back for a new trial. That ruling did not itself establish that she had been doped; it deepened the historical debate over fairness, evidentiary standards, and the power of sports arbitration.
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