Eight-time Olympic champion canoeist Birgit Fischer announced on Tuesday that she would not be coming out of retirement for a third time to compete in August's Beijing Olympic Games.
The 45-year-old came out of retirement for the second time to win gold for Germany at the 2004 Athens games in the K-4 500m category, her eighth gold over a record six Olympic Games, but says there will be no fairytale finale this time.
Fischer is part of an exclusive group of five elite Olympians who have won five or more Olympic gold medals and has been both the youngest and oldest-ever Olympic canoeing champion having won medals aged 18 and 42.
"My decision not to go to Beijing is final, there will be no more comebacks," Fischer told German agency SID having come out of retirement in 1991 and 2003 to compete at Olympic Games the following year.
"I have thought about it and given the issue careful consideration." The 27-time World Champion had originally said in August 2007 she would make a third comeback, but decided she had given herself too little time to return to competition. "I had sponsors, who would have sufficiently supported me. But I did not want to take their money without doing their support justice."
Having won her first canoeing gold at the 1980 Moscow Olympics in the K-1 500 metres category, Fischer only missed the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics after East Germany boycotted the event. Having taken K-4 500 metres gold and K-1 500 metres silver at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Fischer retired in 1989 only to make her first comeback in 1991 to win gold in the K-1 500m and k-4 500m at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
This was the first Olympics were she competed for a reunified Germany. Further golds followed at the 1996 and 2000 games, but her biggest success was Sydney 2000 when she scooped golds in the K-2 and K-4 class over 500m.
Her second retirement in 2001 was broken two years later when she came back to win K-4 500m gold at Athens 2004 and also pick up a silver in the K-2 500m. But after two third-place finishes in the 2005 Flatwater Racing World Championships, the German called it a day for what looks to be the last time.
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