PYEONGCHANG: Triple world champion Elize Christie crashed hard into the protective padding on the last corner of her 1,500-meter speed skating semifinal on Saturday and had to be stretchered off the ice.
The British athlete was chasing South Korean leader Choi Min-jeong together with Li Jinyu when Christie and the Chinese skater tangled.
Officials quickly called for medical help and she was stretchered off in tears. There was no immediate information how serious the injury was, but she was moving and fully conscious. Team GB confirmed that Christie was taken to hospital as a precaution and her boyfriend, Hungarian skater Shaolin Liu, told BBC Sport she had not broken any bones and hopes to compete in the 1,000-meter sprint, which starts on Tuesday.
The reigning 1,500-meter world champion was considered among the favorites for the gold medal, having missed out on a 500-meter medal in similar circumstances earlier in the Games. Christie was later penalized and would not have advanced anyway.
Elsewhere, it was also heartbreak for US skier Lindsey Vonn.
The American, generally considered the greatest female ski racer in history, had a bad run in the upper half of the super-G course and had to settle for sixth place, 0.38 seconds behind surprise champion Ester Ledecka of the Czech Republic and 0.27 away from the bronze medal position.
At Vancouver in 2010, she had taken the bronze in the super-G and the gold in the downhill. She was forced to sit out the Sochi Games four years ago after tearing ligaments in her right knee. But this time around, the four-time overall World Cup champion — and owner of the most race wins on that circuit by a woman, second-most by anyone — focused afterward on a particular miscue. It arrived in what she called “the last critical section,” about 6 seconds from the end of a race that took the winner 1 minute, 21.11 seconds to complete, just 0.01 seconds ahead of silver medalist Anna Veith of Austria, the 2014 champion.
Entering a jump-turn combination, Vonn allowed one of her skis to lift off the snow too much and swept several feet wide of the proper path, barely clearing a gate.
“I misjudged how I came in there,” Vonn acknowledged. That gave away more than a quarter of a second to Ledecka in the final quarter of the piste.
If Vonn hadn’t done that, she said, “I think I would be on the podium, at bare minimum. I mean, that mistake was really big, and I’m only a couple tenths out of first. So I would estimate yes.”
Before that portion, “I mean, I felt really good. I was like, ‘Yes! I got this. I got this.’ And I knew I had to focus all the way to the finish because of that turn.”
Vonn will now have a few days to gather herself and begin preparing for her best event, the downhill, which is scheduled for Wednesday.
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