Was this latest calamitous exit just bad luck or result of reckless tactics?

Difficult questions now have to be asked after such a catalogue of failure, says Ben Bloom

How many times must something happen before probability – or improbability – dictates that it has not just occurred by chance?

It is a question that many will be asking after Elise Christie’s latest calamitous Olympic exit. Six times Christie has attempted to grasp an Olympic medal, well within reach of her ability, and six times she has failed. “It’s not because it’s an Olympics,” insisted Christie, after yesterday’s exit. “That’s short track and that’s the way it goes sometimes.” She has a point.

In eight women’s 1,000metre heats at Gangneung Ice Arena yesterday, six skaters were disqualified for infringements. There were a further five in the men’s 500m heats, while so many teams were booted out of the women’s 3,000m relay final that the bronze medal ludicrously went to a nation that did not even contest the race.

But for one person to experience such misfortune on so many occasions naturally raises the question of how much is, indeed, due to bad luck and how much is down to that person involved.

Worryingly, it does not seem to be a question that Christie is asking – at least publicly. Take her comments after she crashed out of the 500m final last week, when she insisted her fall, when attempting a late, daring move into third place, was “so out of my control”. That she was in such a position at all only occurred because she had failed to win her semi-final and was tasked with starting from the tricky lane four in the final.

Or yesterday when she said she had “no idea” why she was given a yellow card – a worrying thought for her rivals who must find themselves lining up alongside her and wondering if, or when, she may take them out.

Asked whether Christie’s recklessness had caused a part in her downfall, Stewart Laing, GB short-track speed skating performance director, dismissed such a notion and pointed to her triple success at last year’s World Championships. “It is the nature of racing,” he said. “You have heard multiple athletes, and you have heard Elise, say ‘this is short track’. It is the way the sport is. It is crazy, and we love it.”

In a sport of such fine margins, the gap between success and failure is minuscule. Perhaps Christie’s attitude that “it’s just unlucky it’s happened at both Olympics” is a healthy outlook from a sanity perspective. But, equally, it is worth asking the difficult questions as well, because talent is not the problem.