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IN a world where online scrutiny is more intense than ever, world champion speed skater Elise Christie’s story transcends sport.
Elise, 31, triple World Champion, 10-time European Champion and former world record holding short track speed skater. first felt the full weight of online public opinion following three separate disqualifications at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Death threats followed amid a torrent of online hate whereby she was accused of having caused a rival South Korean medal hopeful to crash. And with that, Elise, aged just 24, retreated into a period of mental health support and medication to assist her through traumatic times on the lead up to the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, where again her dreams fell apart after she damaged her ankle ligaments. In December 2018, after months of experimental selfharm as her mental health spiralled out of control, Elise stood at a figurative cliff-edge with a razor blade held against her left wrist.
Years of low esteem and PTSD triggered by events that included a fire at her apartment in
UNDER FIRE: Nottingham which Elise was targeted she was lucky to by Twitter trolls survive, had led her to a place where she felt her life just couldn’t continue as it was.
Elise also broke up with her boyfriend, Hungarian skater Shaolin Sandor Liu in the wake of her Olympic disappointments, and in a candid Instagram post in April 2019, revealed the depth of her struggles.
She wrote: ”I suffered for two years with depression and anxiety, it prevented me being myself and unfortunately I ended up on anti-depressants.
“I’m now really proud to say that I’ve officially managed to get myself off anti-depressants and become more myself again!”
As she approaches her date with destiny at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, Resilience is her incredible
story in her words...
I WAS DAMAGED
By December 28, 2018, I had reached breaking point. No matter how I tried to rationalise everything in my already scrambled brain, I just couldn’t see a way to escape all the problems.
Christ, I was very damaged after PyeongChang. I thought, “I’m done”.
And with that thought, the blade went in. As it did, I knew enough to understand that I was no longer myself, no longer Elise. I’d cut myself before of course, but that was different.
By December 2018, I’d reached a point in my life where I simply couldn’t sweep everything under the carpet: the frustration because of injuries, the low self-worth, the constant financial pressures of being an athlete in a minority sport whose boyfriend had just dumped them by text message. Then there was losing Nick Gooch, my coach. It felt like there was nothing left in my life.
I’d just had enough, the inner pain was just too much and I was sufficiently desperate that I found myself upstairs in my house at midnight holding a razor blade against my left wrist.
I’d like to say that I know what my intention was that night but I genuinely don’t. There was no conscious thought whatsoever.
The blade cut through... “Was that my vein?” I thought, instantly returning to myself. “It is my vein... I’m going to die.”
One thing I knew right then was that I didn’t want to die. I shouted to my friend Brett for help. Thank God he was downstairs.
He loaded me into the front seat of his car and drove me to the hospital. On the way there I went through what I’d just done, over and over in my head. Why had I gone so much further this time? Was I trying to shock myself? Can I ever stop this? This isn’t normal, I thought.
People ask what will you do if it all goes wrong in Beijing in 2022, just like the last two Olympics? I understand myself so well now, I know that I’ll absolutely fall apart if Beijing goes t**s up for some reason. I fully expect to cry on TV and I fully expect to experience all of the crushing feelings of disappointment I felt in 2014 and 2018. I will crumple.
The difference is that this time, no matter how much I implode in the aftermath, I’ll survive. I know that, given time, I’ll re-emerge and get on with the rest of my life. If people shout at me in the street, “You’re a flop!” I can take that. I am, if nothing else, resilient.
Elise Christie: Resilience, published by Reach Sport, is on sale now. RRP £20, save 25% from reachsportshop.com
I had just finished second in Sochi in the 500m but was being blamed for the Korean skater crashing out.
I just burst into tears. I didn’t know what else to do. It was the weirdest experience to be standing there waiting for the judges to decide whether to disqualify me.
I was about to either win an Olympic silver medal or to have one taken away. In an instant, it was gone. The way I rationalised it away in that moment, in order to move on mentally, was by telling myself I was still on form and still the strongest person there. In my head, I had two more good chances.
I went on my phone and when I did I had this feeling like the one you get when you go over a hill in your car. As I started to scroll, my stomach just dropped to the floor.
“Oh my god,” I whispered. I was over it. But the online world felt differently.
I could see that I was getting dog’s abuse from the British public on Twitter for being c**p, and that they shouldn’t be funding me because I was so s**t.
And then I scrolled through Facebook… all I saw were about another 10,000 comments from Koreans. Some were saying that they wanted to kill me and that they wanted to kill my mum.
I genuinely thought that my life as I had known it was over.
For the rest of the Games, I’m told that one of MI5 or MI6, I’m not sure which, followed me around watching my every move.
No matter how much I implode in the aftermath, I’ll survive...