One of the fastest women in Germany seems to be on a collision course at full speed.

Tatjana Pinto, who sprinted to the semi-finals of the 100-meter run at the Tokyo Olympics and finished fifth in the relay, is heading into the 2022 season, in which both the World Championship (Eugene / Oregon) and the European Championship (Munich) are approaching new, blue jersey of TV Wattenscheid.

Michael Reinsch

Correspondent for sports in Berlin.

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In a dispute, she left the LC Paderborn, her sporting home for half a dozen years. The sprinter complains of a lack of appreciation, a lack of support and, ultimately, disabilities in training. It was only a few weeks ago that a school class drove around in go-kart cars on the train that she had booked for training. This was not the first disturbance of its kind. Tatjana Pinto suspects a system behind it.

There was a scandal at the general meeting of LC Paderborn.

Then she was called to come forward to honor, but she did not take a step towards the bouquet.

It belongs to her coach, she said, and didn't move.

Coach Thomas Prange also refused.

Not surprising.

Before Tokyo he had received a mail from the club - instead of congratulating his best runner on his third Olympic qualification, the envelope contained a warning about behavior that was damaging to the club.

The chairman told the local newspaper that his club no longer needed mercenaries who only wore the jersey for money.

Unsurprisingly, Tatjana Pinto takes this personally.

She is considering legal action.

On paper in Wattenscheid

But she doesn't really take the step to Wattenscheid, 130 kilometers to the west. One could understand the press release as saying that Tatjana Pinto enthuses that the change is a new beginning, "like coming from spring into summer". In fact, the athlete and trainer started preparing for the season a long time ago - in Paderborn.

"Where Thomas is, I am too," says Tatjana Pinto of her trainer. The time she trained in Jamaica with Stephen Francis, the coach of Olympic champions Elaine Thompson and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, that she joined Rana Reider’s group in Florida with Olympic champions Tianna Bartoletta, Christian Taylor and Omar McLeod over. With Reider's training group, she moved from Jacksonville to Europe in 2019 - to Wattenscheid of all places. Now she is a Wattenscheider, but she seems chained to Paderborn. She says she's not going anywhere without her coach. Prange doesn't want to leave there for family reasons.

At the German Athletics Association, they were so concerned about the curve runner on their Olympic relay that they were willing to pay rent for their training time on the Paderborn track.

That is not necessary after all.

The facility is the state base for track and field athletes, and the legacy of computer pioneer Heinz Nixdorf also includes free use of the huge Ahorn Sports Park for everyone.

The sisters Yasmin and Keshia Kwadwo have also left Paderborn, but differently from Tatjana Pinto.

You are both expected in Wattenscheid for training.

However, they will still start in the jersey of the LC Paderborn.

Whether everything is settled with the change of club with and without a change of location?

Why does the feeling remain that the next trouble at the Paderborn site won't be long in coming?