Calamity Christie
Agony on the ice as Elise crashes out for second Games running
FOR Elise Christie, the Winter Olympics were meant to be her crowning glory, with a target of three speed skating gold medals.
But last night in Pyeongchang, calamity struck the 27-year- old three-time World Champion once again as she was thrown out of her favourite 1,000-metre event and was carried off the ice in agony by her coach.
Her sad exit from the heat marked the end of another disastrous and painful Olympics that saw the golden girl of Team GB fail to finish a major race and have two more disqualifications added to her record.
There was stunned disbelief among audiences at her latest mishap in South Korea, sparking talk of an ‘Olympic curse’.
The short track skater had already crashed out of her first race in floods of tears. In the second she was stretchered off the ice and taken to hospital after injuring her right ankle in another collision.
But Miss Christie, who was disqualified in all three of her events at Sochi 2014, braved the injury to have one last chance at glory.
It was only confirmed an hour before the race that she would be able to compete – but as she pushed off in her blue skinsuit, it quickly became evident she was still troubled by the injury.
Within moments she had crashed to the ice after being clipped on her injured foot and it looked as if that would end her games there and then as she clutched her leg while lying on the ice.
However, there was a second chance as under short track rules, a crash on the first lap leads to a re- start. Despite being in obvious pain and struggling to make the start-line for the re-start, Miss Christie was soon back into her stride and crossed the line in second place, qualifying her for the semi-final. Within moments of the finish and clearly in great pain, she was scooped up by coach Nicky Gooch and carried away, still believing an Olympic medal was possible.
But then to gasps from the crowd and commentators, it was announced that she had been given a yellow card and disqualified after apparently bumping Holland’s Anna van Ruijven.
The decision stunned the Nottinghambased Scot who, despite her previous disqualifications, had never received a yellow card before. ‘It’s not my decision. I have to take whatever the referee gives me,’ she said.
The athlete said she had gone into the race knowing she had ligament damage from Saturday’s accident, but it was made worse within seconds of the race last night.
She said: ‘I thought about the adrenaline and how that might take over. I was in a lot of pain. I thought “Just do what you can do. I’m at the Olympics, I’m going to give it a go”.’
Asked if she thought she had an Olympic curse, she replied: ‘I guess you could say that. It’s a bit weird that it seems to happen at Olympics and nowhere else.’ Miss Christie, who is dating fellow speed skater Shaolin Sandor Liu, 22, added: ‘I’ve proved myself but I really wanted to bring it home for Great Britain. It really meant a lot to me and I’m devastated that I didn’t.’
There were dozens of messages on Twitter praising her courage last night. One fan wrote: ‘What an incredibly brave performance. Ignore the refs, it turns out you didn’t need a medal to make your country proud.’ Another said: ‘GB should be proud of her courage’.
JUST when her torture on this icy rack seemed to be over, elise Christie steadied her wobbling lip and said she would be back in four years to put it all right.
In the context of what has played out over the past week here and previously at Sochi 2014, it was rather like requesting a best- of-five after twice being struck down by lightning.
What a truly rotten trip to Pyeongchang this has been for the Scot, who landed looking for redemption and leaves looking for a duvet to hide under. On the basis of her current luck and form, she might crash against the doorframe on her way to the bed.
This latest bruising, in the 1,000m heats last night, was perhaps the cruellest of the lot, because ever so briefly it looked like offering a happier ending for the 27-year-old.
But Christie’s fate has long seemed set at these Games and so for everything that she did right in the 1,000m, there was at least one thing that went horribly, horribly wrong.
In the first instance, that meant making this race after three days of rehabilitation on her right ankle following her crash in the 1500m semi-final, and then falling just metres after the start because of a collision with Hungary’s Andrea Keszler. Christie sat close to tears on the ice, feeling ‘ pain I can’t describe in my ankle’, and then got up for the restart, from which she immediately fell 20 to 30 metres behind the other three. Hopeless.
except she raced to the front and crossed the line in second after twice coming within a whisker of crashing.
It was extraordinary, a stunning way to qualify for the quarter-finals. But then came news that she had received a yellow card for infringements against Lara Van Ruijven and Magdalena Warakomska.
A disqualification, to all intents and purposes, to sit with three from Sochi and two crashes here.
Six for six, a perfect run of imperfect Olympic results for a three-time world champion who was meant to be Britain’s best hope at these Olympics in South Korea. She was naturally distraught.
‘I wouldn’t have skated if it was anything other than the Olympics,’ she said.
‘ I need six weeks’ rest. I might have done more damage but that doesn’t matter. I trained all my life for this.’
Then came the wider regret over a Games that had promised so much for her but in which she has failed to deliver.
‘I can promise Britain I’ll fight back from this,’ she said, teetering on the brink of tears. ‘This isn’t the same as last time. Sochi destroyed me.
‘There was a lot of online abuse and I have no comment for people who abuse online — I’m a world champion, get over it. I just see it as three races that went rubbish in the last four years. Unfortunately, all three of them were here.
‘ It’s not because it’s an Olympics, but that’s short track and that’s the way it goes sometimes.
‘For all the success I’ve had, I can’t let this define me. I can’t even count on two hands how many gold medals I’ve won since Sochi and I’m the world record holder (in 500m).
‘This sucks. But it just wasn’t meant to be.
‘ I wanted to try another sport but I’ll commit to this one a bit longer. I’ll be back stronger.’
The discussion will inevitably move on soon to speed skating’s funding from UK Sport of £ 4.76million, for which Christie was expected to bring in one to two medals.
In that sense, the programme has failed badly, even if this demolition derby of a sport is arguably the least predictable of all the events in the Winter Olympics.
But that debate is for the coming days. In the shorter term, it is reasonable to simultaneously believe that Christie has majorly underperformed here, but also feel sympathy for a gifted athlete who already carried deep scars from her pursuit of excellence in her sport.
Indeed, her last words in a recent interview with
Sportsmail were that she did ‘not want to be remembered as that speed skater who fell over’.
Painfully prescient. She’ll need to wait four years to set it straight.