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Elise Christie's momentous heartbreak at Winter Olympics

Divya Hemnani | Updated on: 21 February 2018, 18:06 IST

Elise Christie, a world-record holder, and triple world champion came to one of Britain's few real hopes for gold. This year Olympics has been a curse as short-track speed skater Elise has crashed out or been disqualified six times. She has been dubbed as "Britain's unluckiest Olympian."

In her last six Olympic races, Elise crashed out and the 27-year-old's Olympics ended in tears once more after she was disqualified from the 1,000m on Tuesday, her third failure in Pyeongchang.

The same ill-fated happened in 2014 at Sochi where she was disqualified from all three of her races. The Scot's travails have been followed closely in Britain -- and met mostly with sympathy.At Sochi 2014, she was disqualified from the 500m, 1,000m and 1,500m. Christie also competed at Vancouver 2010, where her best result was 11th in the 500m.

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The Sun, the best-selling tabloid newspaper, branded her "cursed".

In her native Scotland, The Herald called her "Britain's unluckiest Olympian".

On Saturday also, She also departed the arena in tears, in pain, and on a stretcher, after being wiped out in a collision with a Chinese rival in the 1,500m. She also crashed out in the final of the 500m, in which she is the world-record holder.

 

However, this failure didn't shatter Christie, who said she will make another tilt at an Olympic medal at Beijing 2022.
"In terms of me as a person, I didn't see this as, 'This is the Olympics and that's why it happened'," she said.

"I don't see that now, I just see it as three races that went rubbish in the last four years." Short track is notorious for its crashes and penalties. In the women's 1,000m heats on Tuesday, six skaters were disqualified.

Stewart Laing, the performance director of British speed skating said, “Elise is hugely powerful and you can see that by the fact that she holds the 500m world record. This is a sport of tactics and overtaking. So for Beijing I would like to see Elise have the ability to race from any position on the track."

First published: 21 February 2018, 18:06 IST