THE ICE QUEEN
She had death threats after her Sochi nightmare, but now speed skater Elise Christie is...
WITHOUT any warning, Elise Christie has jumped to her feet and is flashing part of her backside at Sportsmail.
She has spent almost an hour discussing the trauma of death threats, but this sudden exhibition concerns the other wounds she has acquired from short-track speed skating.
Pointing to a jagged, four-inch scar that runs south from her lower back, she says, ‘A nail got stuck in my back and ripped a chunk out.
‘I was at a rink in Scotland and fell and slid into the padded barrier. Behind the pad, there was a nail in the wall. When I stood up it just ripped through my back down to my butt. I couldn’t even get it stitched. It was so horrific.
‘ So, yeah, it can get quite interesting.’
Then there’s another memory. ‘At the Olympic qualifiers for Sochi four years ago I had a blade cut across my thigh. That could have been worse — there was an American boy who once cut the femoral artery open on his thigh and someone had to come on to pinch it to save his life. Weird stuff can happen when you do this sport.’
Not many have had it weirder than Christie, the 5ft 3in Scot shouldering a big load in Pyeongchang at the Winter Olympics, which start on Friday. ay.
By some margin, she is Britain’s best shot at gold. She’s probably probas the second and third strongest hopes as well, considering she is world champion at 1,000 metres and 1500m, and will pursue gold in both as well as the 500m, in which she holds the world record. In all, she has won 29 major medals, taking golds on all platforms except the Olympics.
‘Hopefully the time is now,’ she says.
But, then again, no guarantee is less solid than those offered in ice and snow sports, and speed skating is played out on a particularly fickle roulette wheel. It’s a demolition derby between four to six racers travelling at speeds of up to 30mph on a 1mm wide blade.
A lot can go wrong and it — usually does, for which Christie is living proof. That these Games are being staged in Korea makes her mission over the coming fortnight all the more captivating.
It was in South Korea where the storm of death threats erupted four years ago when Christie’s Olympic campaign in Sochi hit the skids with disqualifications in the 500, 1,000m 1500m.
The fury came from the 500m, where Christie recovered from a fall to finish in silver medal position, only to be told she was disqualified for the earlier crash in which she toppled South Korea’s Park Seung-hi. The social media reaction towards Christie from Park’s skating- obsessed nation was poisonous.
‘I left that race thinking, “This is crap, that DQ call could have gone either way, so this sucks”,’ Christie says. ‘But that night — wow. I went out with some teammates for karaoke to cheer me up and after a while I picked up my phone. It was weird because someone on the team had told me not to look at my phone and I was thinking, “Come on, don’t be silly, what’s the worst thing they can say?”
‘So I looked and couldn’t believe it. There were British people saying, “This silly girl can’t even stand up on blades”, which I actually found quite funny. But then there was the Korean side and it was awful, so awful. Hundreds of death threats.
‘I specifically remember one that said, “I am going to kill you and your mum”. You’d think you’d be able to put it down to idiots on the internet but somehow it just got into my head. I won’t lie — I was terrified by it the longer it went on.
‘It became a big deal behind the scenes. I was told that MI6 or whatever were keeping an eye on me, making sure I was safe, and my mum was texting every night to say she was safe. But it just consumes you.
‘I came off social media but I have no doubt that it contributed to what happened in my other two events. Even when I got back, I couldn’t sleep on my own for six months after the Olympics.
‘I know it sounds silly to actually fear these people sat at home on their computers, but I really did think after a while that people wanted to hurt me. There were just so many messages saying terrible things.
‘It was just really horrible. All I did was have a bad day in sport.’
She estimates that she thought about the crash and the backlash ‘every day for almost a year’ and found herself considering quitting the sport. ‘I went and spoke to British Cycling for a chat about taking it up,’ she says.
‘I really thought about swapping. But I wasn’t in the right head space to make that decision at the time. It was emotionally driven and in the end I decided to carry on.’
Part of the rehabilitation process meant training in Korea and ‘realising that the hatred was from a tiny minority’. After taking 15 European and world medals between 2014 and 2016, redemption finally came at the World Championships last March, when she won the 1,000 and 1500m and took o overall gold, with no British w woman having previously w won a world title.
‘That for me was the big o one,’ Christie says. ‘I want to win the Olympics because that has always been the goal and it is the one everyone sees. But the World Championships is harder to win.’ Chris Christie arrives in Korea as a ‘ stronger stron person, a more confide confident person’, and the target is gold in the 1,000 and 1500m and ‘ whatever else happens in the 500m.’.
‘If I am in a position where I am a comfortable silver and would need to risk everything to get gold, then I am going for gold. If that means being willing to fall in chasing gold, so be it. I am not going there for silvers, I am going for golds.’
That is the aim, along with one other thing. ‘It would be nice to not be remembered as that speed skater who fell over.’ she says.
With any luck that old wound will soon heal for good.