Career
Her best times include 15:03 for 5000 meters, 31:21 for 10,000 meters, 67:58 for the half marathon and 2:21:45 for the marathon. Pippig obtained American citizenship in 2004, and now also holds an American passport. In 2004, Pippig founded "Take The Magic Step" to provide health information and charitable support to individuals and to organizations that promote wellness and education.
In 2005, she was named to the Board of Advisors of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab.
The daughter of two physicians, Pippig began running at the age of 13 while a citizen of the former East Germany. In university, she was a medical student at the Humboldt University Berlin where, after passing her final exams, she chose to re-focus her attention exclusively on running professionally.
She left East Germany in 1990 before German reunification. In 1998, an out-of-competition drug test found Pippig had an elevated ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone, and the German Athletics Federation attempted to ban her for two years.
Pippig contested the finding on the grounds that her testosterone levels were normal, and that the elevated ratio was due to a low level of epitestosterone from a long battle with chronic bowel disease and other factors.
This claim was supported by a variety of independent medical experts, and a German arbitration court ultimately dismissed the case.