Christie determined to reach last chance saloon
● World champion working hard to shake off ankle injury in bid for final shot at a medal Kevin Garside In Pyeongchang
No medals yet from the blades of Elise Christie, but if it’s drama you’re after, the first diva of short track speed skating is a Bafta winner.
The Team GB generals maintain that a decision on her participation in the 1,000-metre heats today will be made at the last minute after a late training session. The plotline demands that she be escorted to the line in a sedan chair.
This is Christie’s final Olympics, a last chance to wrap her career in ermine. After blowouts in the 500m and 1,500m here, and all three events in Sochi, the imperative is to get to the line whatever. She has one heat today, then it’s back for the medal show on Thursday.
Team GB chef de mission, Mike Hay, said he was cautiously optimistic about Christie’s prospects. “The reason for saying that is she was on the ice today. That was purely to see if she could put the boot on and skate around a little bit.
“She will go through a training session tomorrow. If she comes through that – and it’s still a big if – then she will compete tomorrow evening. She absolutely wants to and if medically we are happy, it’s clear that the decision will be hers to skate. Certainly the indications that we’ve got for now, she is very keen to skate. We just need to make sure that medically everything is ok.”
Christie posted a video on her Twitter feed of her pedalling on the stationary bike with the message “working hard to turn this around”. She followed that with a Churchillian “V”. We assume it was a call to action, not a peace motif, a message amplified by Hay who dismissed concerns that events might have impacted negative lyon Chris tie’ s psyche.
“To be honest I’m not really concerned about that,” he said. “This is her last chance at the Games. She is a different athlete from what she was four years ago [in Sochi]. I’m not sure she could have handled it the same way.
“You don’t become a double world champion in between times without some resilience. She’s got one chance to go and she’s desperate. The head space, or whatever you want to call it, she’s going to just be determined to make sure that ankle is fit. There’s obviously going to be an element of risk if she does make it.”
Christie has found the social media environment a troubling space in the past, her equilibrium not surprisingly upset by the death threats issued by Korean trolls during the Sochi games.
There has been a negative swirl this time following successive failures here, but her response supports Hay’s contention that, mentally at least, Christie is much more robust in Pyeongchang.
“You’re picking up on the minority. I would say an awful lot of people have got a lot of goodwill for her. You don’t become a world champion if you’re not a great athlete. She has got what it takes, she just needs to get it right.
“In this world you’re going to get a few haters,” Hay said. “We’ve seen a number of other Olympians tweeting things in her favour. She is not looking at the crap out there, she is looking at people who mean something to her.”
Christie’s potential as a double world champion in the 1,000m and 1,500mandtheworldrecordholderat 500m was a factor in the prediction of at least five medals in Pyeongchang. The count stands at four, courtesy of the unexpected bounty in the skel-
eton, which delivered one gold and two bronze.
Even in her diminished state, Christie arguably remains Britain’s best chance of meeting the target, though the times set by the two-woman bobsleigh might yet yield more plunder.
The target issue feeds into the wider debate about the direction British winter sport should pursue. The pregames boasts about becoming a topfive Alpine nation in the next 12 years seem wildly optimistic, suggesting a narrowing of the focus might produce the greater results.
The success of the Dutch in speed skating demonstrates the value of that approach and given the raised profile of the sport in Britain following Christie’s achievements perhaps we should be knocking out rinks up and down the nation.