GANGNEUNG, South Korea — Claudia Pechstein needs a second to remember her first Olympics, but you’re willing to give her a break — it has been 26 years, after all.

Back then, Pechstein was just a kid, a 19-year-old competing as a speedskater for a unified Germany after growing up on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall. At those 1992 Olympics, Germany’s first after reunification, Pechstein shared a room with Christa Luding-Rothenburger, the de facto team mom. Luding-Rothenburger was 32. Pechstein thought that was ancient.

What does that make Pechstein now? On Friday, when she will contend for a medal in the 5,000 meters, she’ll be just six days shy of her 46th birthday. She has won five Olympic gold medals, two silvers and two bronzes. She’s redefining what an Olympian should look like.

This is Pechstein’s seventh Olympics. A rare active athlete who can claim to have represented East Germany internationally, she’s at least 20 years older than more than half of her competitors in the 5,000. Nine of the 17 athletes entered in the race weren’t born when she won her first Olympic medal, a bronze at those 1992 Games in Albertville, France.