Winter Olympics: the agony and the ecstasy

“If there were an Olympic medal for woe, Elise Christie would have an unrivalled collection,” said Matt Dickinson in The Times. At the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, the British speed skater was disqualified from all three events she entered. When she arrived in Pyeongchang last month, as a world champion, the 27-year-old’s prospects looked more promising. But this time she crashed in the 500m, finishing fourth; she was disqualified from the 1,500m, for colliding with another skater, and from the 1,000m for nudging one competitor in the heats and pushing another. The odd disqualification or crash could be called unfortunate. But “six out of six”? That’s “a pattern”. Speed skaters have to “ping around” at more than 20mph, said Sean Ingle in The Guardian. Crashes are par for the course: five other women in the 1,000m heats were disqualified. Yet Christie skates in a particularly “muscular” fashion, which makes “the gap between glory and disaster” all the narrower. Why, then, wasn’t she a little more cautious, at least after that first disqualification? Instead of “trying a daring move”, she should have just gone for bronze.

The contrast between Christie and the 22-yearold Czech Ester Ledecká could hardly be more glaring, said Oliver Brown in The Sunday Telegraph. Not only did Ledecká win a shock skiing gold, in alpine super-g – she also took a snowboarding gold in parallel giant slalom. It was “a feat for the ages”: she is only the third athlete, and first woman, to win gold in two different sports at the same Winter Games. And to do so in activities as different as skiing and snowboarding is nothing short of remarkable: “while skiers rely on their skis to navigate down the mountain, boarders use their bodies”. At a Winter Olympics of “the most intense colour”, nobody “shone brighter” than Ledecká.