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Sabine Eichenberger is a true legend of canoeing. Her career lasted more than 30 years and she won over twenty medals at World and European Championships in Wildwater canoeing, but her biggest success was Olympic silver medal from Atlanta 1996 where she paddled in Swiss K4 500 metres crew. “It was a long time ago, but my memories of it make me believe that it took place recently. It is clearly the most beautiful and greatest success that I had,” she said in an interview for Aargauer Zeitung.

 

 

 

Eichenberger won Wildwater canoeing European Champion title last year in Skopje in women’s C1 classic race, making her the oldest Swiss athlete to win European Champion title in any sport. She celebrated individual world champion title in women’s K1 classic race in 2008 in Ivrea and in 2004 in Garmich-Partenkirchen. In 2011 in Kraljevo and in 1997 in La Plagne she was European Champion in women’s K1 classic race. Besides that she has four more individual and four team medals at World Championships (the first medal at World Championships she won in 1991 in Bovec), six individual and four team medals at European Championships.

 

 

 

In the last competitive season, when the Wildwater Canoeing World Championships was organised in Switzerland, she picked up bronze medal in women’s K1 classic team event.

 

 

 

“I am especially grateful to those who have always supported me for the last 30 years.
I have felt the age in sport in recent years. Especially on the whitewater it gets harder and harder for me. There are many details that are no longer as self-evident as they used to be. In my recent success, I benefited from the fact that the courses were not too difficult. But here on the Muota, where there are waves from A to Z, then it is just not enough to challenge the younger. The question of the right time to resign is so often in life. I clearly saw it this time. It is a decision that has matured for a long time. I have said several times before that I will stop. This time it's right for me,” she said in an interview after the World Championships in Switzerland.