[3] After the World Championships in Norway in February 2009, the International Skating Union accused Pechstein of blood doping and banned her from all competitions for two years.

[9] In "Autonomy and Biopower in the Anti-Doping Establishment: A Rogue Agent of Governmentality," sport historian Daniel Rosenke reviews Pechstein's case, citing it as an example of the contentious nature of the biological passport.

[10] After collecting sample data on the skater for a period of nearly nine years, the ISU banned Pechstein from competition for an above threshold fluctuation in reticulocyte percentage, a blood parameter used in passport profiling.

Notably, Pechstein argued her ‘%Retics’ of 3.49 fell into the normal range for women her age and asserted that the International Skating Union’s (ISU) threshold limit of 2.4 was far too low, basing this claim on a confluence of data in medical science.

In short, she questioned the reliability and accuracy of the entire procedure's longitudinal sample collection, which ultimately led to her violation of the ISU's anti-doping code.

She suggested as the CAS pointed out, that "the ISU must convince the panel (of arbitrators) to a level very close to ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that all alternative causes for the increase of %Retics can be excluded, and that additionally, the [a]thlete had an intention to use blood doping.

"[12] An important consideration here is that the burden of proof should be proportional the severity of the accusation (according to the World Anti-Doping Code), and in legal terms, should fall closer to beyond a reasonable doubt than the ‘comfortable satisfaction’ of the panel.

Pechstein denied that she had doped and appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne, claiming, among other things, that she has an inherited condition explaining the abnormal measurements.

She was allowed to participate at a single 3000 m race in Salt Lake City so that she could qualify for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver should her appeal of the ban be successful.

[16] On 19 February 2010 the CAS ad hoc panel at the Vancouver Olympics rejected Pechstein's last-minute appeal to be admitted to the ice skating team events.

[18] On 15 March 2010, Gerhard Ehninger, head of the German Society for Hematology and Oncology, said that an evaluation of the case points to a light form of blood anemia called spherocytosis – apparently inherited from her father.