Controversial crash for unlucky Brit speedster
Elise Christie doesn’t want to keep proving that when she falls, she can get back up.
The British speedskater’s Olympic misfortune from the 2014 Winter Games carried into the first medal race of the Games in Pyeongchang, when she spun out and hit the wall on the second-to-last lap of the 500-meter women’s final Tuesday night.
Christie looked up from the ice in disbelief after she felt Dutch rival Yara van Kerkhof caused her to lose her balance. Video replay later showed van Kerkhof ’s right skate briefly collided with Christie’s left hand as it guided her on the inside lane, sending Christie into the wall feet first.
Van Kerkhof went on to win the silver medal, while Italy’s Arianna Fontana took home the gold and Canada’s Kim Boutin the bronze. Christie finished in fourth.
It was an all-too-familiar feeling for Christie, who holds the world record in the 500m (42.335 seconds), after she was ruled to have caused two crashes in separate final races (500m and 1000m) at the Sochi Olympics and then disqualified from the 15000m event for skating inside the finish line during a heat.
Christie tried to explain Tuesday’s sequence of events through tears to reporters after the race.
“I was knocked over, I didn’t fall on my own. I’ve worked so hard for the 500 and it was taken away from me,” she said.
“It’s out of my control. I got knocked over and that’s that. When it’s something you’ve worked on, for someone to knock you over, it seems so unfair. … At least I can go home and think I didn’t make any mistakes, but it still sucks.”