‘I won’t stop fighting, even if I slip again’
Speed skater Elise Christie hit rock bottom when she attempted suicide, but she is battling back against her own inner demons and the critics of her stand on mental health, writes Pippa Field
Elise Christie is prepared for what will come next. She knows talking in depth about the physical and mental battles of the last 2½ years – another Olympic nightmare, the subsequent fallout, the spiralling financial debt, the attempt to take her own life and ongoing efforts to move forwards amid a global pandemic – will provoke an unwelcome, yet inevitable, backlash.
“If I appear in the news, I’ll get people going, ‘there’s that girl whining again’,” she says, her tone hardened through painful experience. “That’s people who don’t get mental health,
I suppose. If you don’t understand what I’m getting at, and who I’m helping, then jog on.”
Christie is the best short track speed skater Britain has produced, a triple world champion and 10-time European gold medallist. But to many, whose interest in the sport is only piqued every four years, she is the Brit who either falls over or is disqualified at the Winter Olympics.
The period since the last Games in Pyeongchang in 2018 – where she was twice disqualified and fell in the final of her other event – have “100 per cent” been the hardest of her life mentally: “I’m doing a lot better because I’m dealing with things. But I’m still in and out of it.
“That’s the message I’m trying to share to others. I’m not suddenly not mentally ill anymore, that doesn’t happen overnight.” Sheltering from the autumnal drizzle while also adhering to social distancing (at the time a second national lockdown had not been implemented) the 30-year-old is perched on a chair in the halffinished extension to the back of her Nottinghamshire home, one that threatened to be derailed two years ago by cowboy builders but is now slowly getting back on track, even if it is still half open to the elements.
Next door the neighbours are ploughing on with their own renovations, the drilling sounds threatening to drown out Christie’s words. In many ways the entire scene could be a metaphor for Christie’s career: recurring setbacks, others advancing ahead of her, people trying to silence her. But like her half-finished house, she is still standing. Just. The “Elise Christie life rebuild” is a work in progress. But, unlike before, her hope is that the foundations are now in place. “It’s like someone having a tumour, knowing they’ve got a tumour and then doing nothing about it for ages because they are avoiding it,” she explains. “By the time you deal with it, it’s gone too far. It’s the same thing. If you don’t deal with your mental health and your mental illness properly, then it goes too far and sometimes you can’t come back from that.”
Christie is speaking from experience. It was on Dec 28, 2018, her thoughts consumed by making her first individual competitive appearance since Pyeongchang at the forthcoming European Championships off
little preparation, that her self-harm tendencies tipped over into being suicidal.
“I sometimes imagine if I had done something worse that day,” she says slowly, reliving the early hours of the following morning she spent in hospital after an ambulance was called to her house. “I wasn’t someone who researched suicide at all. But I could have died. A lot of people do. And they might not have actually wanted to.
“At that point I was done. I can’t even describe the moment because you’re not yourself. Everything has taken over and you’re watching yourself.
“As soon as I did it, I was just saying over and over I don’t want to die.”
The prospect of competing again might have been the tipping point but Christie’s inner turmoil had started long before, even as far back as her school days when bullying led to increased anxiety. There was also the time she had to jump out of her flat following a fire, and then she was sent death threats over social media following the 2014 Olympics. Prior to Pyeongchang, Christie was already on antidepressants but the aftermath of those Games – including her boyfriend and Hungarian speed skater, Shaolin Liu, ending their relationship and long-time coach Nicky Gooch being made redundant due to funding cuts – sent a “numb” Christie into a tailspin.
A diagnosis of depression eventually came, but Christie’s ways of dealing with her problems had been causing further strife, including getting herself £10,000 in debt through manic spending – “I guess I thought it would make me happy. I wasn’t paying attention, I couldn’t really. If I started dealing with life I’d have to deal with how I felt.” And then there was the self-harm.
“Self-harm is either I don’t feel anything and I need to feel something,” she explains. “The other one is anxiety self-harm where I’d say you’re almost feeling too much. I get anxiety in my chest, it makes me feel like I’m panicking and the only way to get away from it is to self-harm.
“It’s not a healthy way to live. I wish I’d stopped the first time I did it, because I wouldn’t have got into a spiral of being reliant on it.”
In the aftermath of her suicide attempt, her physio – upon finding out about the incident when treating the wound – reported the matter out of a duty of care.
Up until shortly before our interview, Christie had gone six months without self-harming, managing to cope with the anxiety caused by coronavirus shutting down all sport, leading to months off the ice.
But sometimes it is the smallest of things that can be a trigger and, after picking up a small injury, she fell out of her routine, stopped taking her medication and returned to self-harm. While a setback, Christie believes the fact she was then able to contact her sports psychologist demonstrates the steps forward she has taken compared to previous years.
“The last thing I want to say is I’ve failed again,” she says. “But because I recognised that it had happened, I was then able to identify the person who could help me the most. I am someone who is recovering from extreme depression and anxiety, who was a consistent self-harmer.
“It’s normal to have a slip-up. I’ve gone from every day to once in six months and that’s something to be proud of. Next time hopefully it will be a year, or more, or for ever. But that’s why it is so important to talk about it.”
In the past Christie has chosen to disclose her “bad episodes” over social media in an attempt to help others, but she found it came at a cost and it is the reason she is currently restricting her usage of most platforms, instead focusing on a new Youtube channel to help remove the stigma around mental health. “When I slip up, I feel like I get judged a lot more for it because I promote mental health. I felt there is a lot of pressure on me. But I’m actually still recovering.”
Given all the trauma that has gone before – which also included complications following appendix surgery last year before her new coach, the former British Olympian Richard Shoebridge, helped her regain focus – it does seem an obvious question to ask why Christie continues to subject herself to the pressures that come with elite sport.
The answer can be found in how her eyes light up when she relives flying at speed around a corner on the ice or the tone of her voice when describing short track as the “love of her life”.
Christie did not race competitively last season because of injury while this year’s World Championships were cancelled due to coronavirus. With the current season also disrupted by the pandemic, she faces the prospect of only completing one full season between the 2018 and 2022 Olympics.
“I’ve just tried to focus on the positives,” says Christie.
“By the time I get to these Games I’ll have a period of building.
“There is that gut instinct in me that feels like I was always meant to medal. If I didn’t have that gut feeling then I would have walked away from it.
“It’s not easy to fix your mental health, especially when you’ve got people around you trying to do the opposite. Your life might be throwing crap at you, but there is always a way to fight back.”
Despite the blows, Christie is still fighting.
‘I am recovering from extreme depression, anxiety and consistent self-harming. It is normal to have a slip-up’