I believe she can, too! This is a very, VERY good article - not just about Elise, but also about ST in general:
Elise Christie: I believe I can make the podium at Sochi 2014 GamesBritain's world No1 short-track speed skater reveals how a fear of failure forced her to raise her gameby Sean Ingle / The Observer, Saturday 5 January 2013 16.59 EST
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/jan/05/elise-christie-sochi-2014-gamesTo watch short-track speed skaters whizz around a rink is to be immersed in a real-life Spirograph. Racers criss-crossing and cutting each other up, creating hypnotic epitrochoids on the ice, before ruining their work with a messy scramble to the line. At least that used to be the case. But then Elise Christie, a 22-year-old from Livingstone, tore up the page.
Imagine Vicky Pendleton going full pelt from the off, allowing her opponent to draft in her slipstream, but still winning. That's what Christie, the world No1 in her favoured event, the 1,000m short track, likes to do. As the gun fires and her blades are unstabbed from the ice, she sprints to reach the bend first – and then spends the rest of the race defying the lactic acid flaring in her thighs and her rivals' efforts to pass her; a rabbit against the looming greyhounds.
As a tactic it is simple, painful, and quite revolutionary. "In the last year or so Elise has changed the way women's 1,000m short-track skaters race," says GB short track's performance director Stuart Horsepool. "In 2012, 36 skaters came within 2% of the 1,000m world record in 2012, compared with none at all in the 1500m, often because they were chasing down and drafting off Christine."
"Physically she's an amazing athlete," he adds, with evident pride. "She has become stronger than any girl in the sport."
For Christie, though, her tactics boil down to basic common sense. "It can be horrible and scary in the pack," she says, her voice barely rising above a whisper. "You can't control what other skaters are doing. Sometimes they bump you and you fall and that's it. But when you're in front pushing hard you avoid most of that. There are also fewer regrets because you've given it your all."
Since changing her approach in 2011, Christie has won two gold medals and reached the podium four further times in World Cup races. Given that there are just six World Cup events in a year, that's an impressive strike rate, but Christie is not entirely happy. "I would have won more but I keep messing up my final lap," she says. "But I've been working on it."
Still, there is an understandable buzz at the National Ice Centre in Nottingham and with good reason. Only Nicky Gooch, who took a bronze in the 500m in Lillehammer in 1994, has won a British Olympic medal in short track – a sport dominated by South Korea, Canada, the United States and China, who have won 99 of 115 Olympic medals between them –yet Christie's rapid race up the ranks since taking up the sport seriously at 15 has laid down a marker. Now she wants to collect.
She sees the staging posts on the road to Sochi in her mind's eye – the European Championships in 12 days' time which will serve as a warm-up for the world championships in March; the Olympic trials in November; and then, in March 2014, the Winter Olympics – but she does not worry about pressure or fame, even though she may go into the Games as Britain's best shot at gold.
"I don't think about that," she insists. "And I'm not doing it for the money either – you only get about £2,500 if you win a big race. I just want to do something with my life that's worthwhile. I don't want to be one of those people who goes through the motions, or is wasted all the time. Later on I'm going to have a job like everyone else. But for now I'm giving everything I can to be the best."
Christie was not always so absolute. She showed enough raw talent as a 19-year-old at the 2010 Winter Olympics to finish in the top 20 in the 500m, 1,000m and 1500m but she left Vancouver wondering whether to pack it in. "That experience changed me," she admits. "I went into it thinking: I'm not going to win a medal, and it was hard to deal with. To be honest, I was always into the sport but I never really thought I was going to get anywhere."
Shortly afterwards something clicked. "You see a lot of Olympians do three Games and finish in the same place every time," she says, with matter-of-factness not malice. "I didn't want to be one of them, so I decided I needed to change everything. Diet. Exercise. My whole approach. I went from being a normal teenager to a proper athlete who motivated myself and set my own goals."
Christie certainly lives the life. She is up by 6.15am to be on the ice for 7am, the first of three training sessions during the day. At 5ft 3½in she is the smallest member of the Team GB short-track squad but she is strong enough to leg-press 340kg. "I don't drink in season at all now," she adds. "Actually, I had one little glass of wine at Christmas but that was it. It makes you put on weight, affects your recovery and dehydrates you. I just don't see it as worthwhile."
Christie's progress has been hugely helped by being able to train full-time thanks to a healthy dollop of lottery money, which has risen from £964,000 before Vancouver to £2.8m ahead of Sochi. "It has made a difference," admits Horsepool. "But to be on our world-class performance programme you have to be within 6% of the world record in your event. We have 14 athletes. That's all."
The GB team sent four skaters to Turin in 2006 and seven to Vancouver, and that number is likely to swell again, with Christie at the vanguard. "Everything is building to the Olympics," she admits. "And I really believe I can make the podium. Of course, because it's speed skating something can always go wrong but I'm in a good place."
But despite being switched on, she performs best when she is switched off. "When I'm skating, I zone out without realising it," she says. "Before a race most skaters are looking at their coach for advice but I'm in my own world. I'm thinking about my leg, or how my face is looking. If I start thinking about skating I tense up and skate weird.
"But when I am being natural I skate natural and it feels nice," she says, pausing as she reaches for the right words. "It feels like it's what I was meant to do."[/img]
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