‘I’ll be back. I’ve trained all my life to win at Olympics’

JUST when her torture on this icy rack seemed to be over, Elise Christie steadied her wobbling lip and said she would be back in four years to put it all right. In the context of what has played out over the past week here and previously at Sochi 2014, it was rather like requesting a best-of-five after twice being struck down by lightning. What a truly rotten trip to Pyeongchang this has been for the Scot, who landed looking for redemption and leaves looking for a duvet to hide under. On the basis of her current luck and form, she might crash against the doorframe on her way to the bed. This latest bruising, in the 1,000 metres heats yesterday, was perhaps the cruellest of all, because ever so briefly it looked like offering her a happier ending. But Christie’s fate has long seemed set at these Games and so for everything that she did right in the 1,000m, there was at least one thing that went horribly, horribly wrong. In the first instance, that meant making this race after three days of rehabilitation on her right ankle following her crash in the 1,500m semi-final, and then falling just metres after the start because of a collision with Hungary’s Andrea Keszler. Christie sat close to tears on the ice, feeling ‘pain I can’t describe in my ankle’, and then got up for the restart, from which she immediately fell 20 to 30m behind the other three. Hopeless. Except she raced to the front and crossed the line in second after twice coming within a whisker of crashing. It was extraordinary, a stunning way to qualify for the quarter-finals. But then came news that she had received a yellow card for infringements against Lara van Ruijven and Magdalena Warakomska. A disqualification, to sit with three from Sochi and two crashes here. Six for six, a perfect run of imperfect Olympic results for a three-time world champion who was meant to be Britain’s best hope at these Olympics. ‘I wouldn’t have skated if it was anything other than the Olympics,’ she said. ‘I need six weeks’ rest. I might have done more damage but that doesn’t matter. I trained all my life for this.’ Then came the wider regret over a Games that had promised so much for her but in which she has failed to deliver. ‘I can promise Britain I’ll fight back from this,’ she added, teetering on the brink of tears. ‘This isn’t the same as last time. Sochi destroyed me. ‘There was a lot of online abuse and I have no comment for people who abuse online — I’m a world champion, get over it. ‘I just see it as three races that went rubbish in the last four years. Unfortunately, all three of them were here. I’ll be back stronger.’ The discussion will inevitably move on soon to speed skating’s funding from UK Sport of £4.76million, for which Christie was expected to bring in one to two medals. In that sense, the programme has failed badly, even if this demolition derby of a sport is arguably the least predictable of all the events in the Winter Olympics. But that debate is for the coming days. In the shorter term, it is reasonable to simultaneously believe that Christie has majorly under-performed here, but also feel sympathy for a gifted athlete who already carried deep scars from her pursuit of excellence in her sport.