Crying shame as Elise crashes out
FRESH HEARTBREAK AS CHRISTIE CRASHES IN FINAL
SHE cried as she left the ice, she cried as she explained the fall and she cried loudest when she rounded a corner and thought she was out of sight.
In that corridor, with hands on knees, she let out a noise of pure devastation. It really was a wretched gut-punch of an evening for Elise Christie.
The only question now is whether her entire trip to South Korea will end in tears because it was awfully difficult to imagine her regaining composure any time soon as she said: ‘I just can’t see how I live with this feeling.’
It was the kind of sporting pain that goes deep and the kind of depth that can only be reached when the wounds of the present are applied directly to the scar tissue of the past.
And in that context, this 500 metres speed skating final was a gruesome surgery on her biggest neuroses.
The bare fact is that Britain’s best hope in these Games fell over and finished fourth. The wider trauma that everyone knows by now is that she was disqualified in all three of her disciplines in Sochi 2014 and the 500m was the worst of that bunch, because she fell and took out a Korean, prompting a shed load of death threats from this very nation. These Games were meant to be her ladder to redemption at the end of four years of recovery, in which she took three world titles. But this final felt like a pretty long snake backwards. And so she cried. She cried for the result and she cried because of what she felt was an injustice in the circumstances of her fall, which occurred during a guts-orglory charge for gold when placed third at the start of the final lap. Until then, it had been a tough race spent mostly in fourth, but Christie had vowed to the media in the build-up that she would sacrifice a silver or bronze to chase gold. So she did and entered the tightest of spaces on the inside where a collision usually seems inevitable in short track speed skating. Brave? Definitely. Foolish? Possibly, yes. The bit that went wrong came when Holland’s Yara van Kerkhof caught Christie’s left hand with her right blade. Christie felt she was impeded. Another camera angle suggested her own left foot had given way into a slide a fraction before the impact.
Whatever the case, it’s too late now. The 500m, in which she twice broke the Olympic record in three races to reach the final, is gone.
The first medal shot is gone too, the gold won by Italy’s Arianna Fontana, one of the skaters Christie inadvertently took out in that final four years ago. Funny how things turn out in sport.
For Christie’s part, it was anything but.
‘I was knocked over, I didn’t fall on my own,’ she said through her sobs. ‘I worked so hard. It has been taken away from me. I know it is short track and I am supposed to be prepared for this but it still hurts.
‘I have got a few days to reset. But right now I just can’t see how I live with this feeling. It is out of my control that I got knocked over.’
Tears flowed and she continued: ‘ It’s obviously really hard to explain, I’ve worked so hard for that moment out there and I got knocked over. It’s so out of my control but almost that feels worse — at least I can go home and think I didn’t make any mistakes, but it still sucks.’
The frustration will doubtless grow when it dawns on Christie that had she settled for fourth in the five-woman field instead of pushing for gold, she would have been retrospectively bumped up to bronze. The second-placed Korean, Choi Min-jeong, was disqualified with Van Kerkhof winning silver and Canadian Kim Boutin bronze. Christie finished fifth so jumped a place to fourth.
Now she must prepare herself for the 1500m event on Saturday.
On the basis of her emotions, that is no easy task. Already Team GB are talking about having undertaken ‘ scenario planning’ for this sort of crisis.
Yet it is hard to see how any psychological role play could fully prepare for this kind of scenario. Not when Christie’s final comment in a recent Sportsmail interview was: ‘It would be nice to not be remembered as that speed skater who fell over.’
With any luck she can somehow pick herself up fast.