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Elise Christie disqualified from 1,000m after heat is restarted at Winter Olympics

Elise Christie disqualified from 1,000m after heat is restarted at Winter Olympics

Elise Christie’s Olympic curse struck again on Tuesday as she was disqualified from her heat of the 1,000metres short track speed skating.

Her last time on ice on Saturday ended in the back of an ambulance and her return was no less dramatic, her Olympic dream once again ending in heartache.

The fifth heat of the night had all the drama of her Games to date, a trip and crash off the start line, and bumpy ride to seemingly qualify in second from the 1000metre only to be disqualified moments later by the race officials.

It meant for the second successive Olympics that Christie struck out in all three events.

In Sochi, it was a trio of disqualifications, in PyeongChang, two crashes in her earlier races before a yellow card today for two in-race penalties during a tumultuous race.

Her hopes of lining up for this event, her favourite distance in which she is the world champion and had aspirations for gold had hung in the balance from the moment she clattered into the cushioned barriers at the Gangneung Ice Arena, and had to be tended to by medics.

But before leaving the athletes’ village today, she posted a short video on Twitter saying that she had skated for the first time since her off-ice excursion and that “it went quite well considering the circumstances”.

It was hardly laying down the gauntlet to her rivals but the message from the Team GB camp had been that she was buoyant despite some apparent vitriol on social media.

Her test of the ankle in the morning, the first time she has laced up her race skates since crashing out in the 1500m, seemed to go well, although her performance director Stewart Laing played down expectations beforehand by saying she was no more than 80 to 90 per cent.

On the start line, she looked relaxed but had the worst possible start when she was tripped and cascaded into the barriers, now familiar territory for the Briton.

She grimaced as she held her ankle in pain, barely able to stand. But after her coach Nick Gooch tightened up her skate with a message of reassurance to which Christie nodded, she lined up at the start again.

Seemingly so painful is the ankle that she was barely able to push off the ice, falling way behind the rest of the field: Holland’s Lara van Ruijven, Hungarian skater Andrea Keszler, Hungary and Magdalena Warakomska, of Poland.

But she bided her time from the back of the field, moving up a spot with four laps to go before her first race indiscretion with three laps left as she tried to go up to second.

Her rhythm became more fluent through the race as she finished second, immediately stopping at the barriers, and carried off by Gooch unable to walk.

Barely into the bowels of the arena then the yellow card was announced, ending the hopes of Britain’s best pre-Games gold medal bet for another Olympiad.

And so the long talked about day of reckoning ended in much the same way as her first heartache of the Games exactly a week ago.

Where the 27-year-old goes from now is unclear and whether body and mind can take another Olympics is another matter.

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