What short track giveth, short track useth to land you on your arseth. Britain's Elise Christie found that out in the least fun way possible here, losing out on the silver medal she thought she'd won when finishing second in the women's 500m.
It would have been Britain’s second medal of the games; instead it was disqualification and a shunt down to eighth place in the final rankings. But hey, that’s short track.
That's not The Irish Times being glib, by the way. We're When-In-Romeing here. HTST is evidently the stock response of damn near everyone involved with the sport, regardless of the situation.
The raging hot favourite goes down in the semi-final, clearing the way for an outsider like Christie to get in? Hey, that’s short track.
The final is detonated from the inside midway through the first lap with three quarters of the field wiped out? Hey, that’s short track. The shelf in your wardrobe where you keep your summerwear? No, that’s a shorts rack.
Christie knew she was lucky to be in with a medal shout at all. The 500m isn’t her strongest event but she snuck into the final when Chinese favourite Xexin Fan somehow managed to trip herself up early in the semi-final, leaving Christie in a lead she managed to defend all the way to the line.
Fan was the out-and-out favourite for gold, decreed as such by the Chinese coaches after four-time Olympic champion Wang Meng broke her ankle in January. The explosive Fan was just about to zip into the lead on the third corner of the first lap when the tip of her skate jagged in the ice and sent her toppling out to the right.
She hadn’t been bumped, she hadn’t been touched – she just clod-hopped herself like a once-a-year skater with a few Christmas jars on board. Ordinarily, you’d think it inconceivable. But hey, that’s short track.
Short track speed skating is the sport's Twenty20. It's chaotic, it's breakneck, it's far, far cooler than its comparatively staid older sibling. It's so cool, even the Olympics doesn't call it by its full name. Only squares don't say short track.
Done and dusted
In the final, Christie was up against Korea's Seung-Hi Park, China's Jianrou Li and Arianna Fontana of Italy. Four in a line, four and a half laps of the track, all done and dusted in under 44 seconds.
Park had the inside line and got to the first corner first. Down the straight, Christie tried to improve from third to second by going up the inside of Fontana. The Italian went to shut the door but Christie didn’t take the hint. A scrape, a scuffle, a cloud of ice. Park, Fontana and Christie on the floor. Li streaking away for gold.
And though Christie reacted quickest to get up and skate home for second, it was obvious straight away that she had her suspicions as to whether the result would pass the referee’s smell test. Within a couple of minutes, the scoreboard updated itself. Fontana silver, Park bronze, Christie DQ.
“If I sat in third, I knew the Chinese girl would attack at the end and I didn’t want to be the one she was attacking,” she explained through tears afterwards. “I had the speed so I moved up but unfortunately the girl hit me off my feet and that meant I hit everyone else and brought them down. That’s just the way short track goes.
“It was a 50/50 call and the referee made his decision. My call would have been different. There was a little gap and I just used my instinct and went and now I’m regretting it. But I went for the win and that’s just the way it went. I didn’t think I’d be penalised. I thought she hit me.”
Fontana, it’s fair to say, did not think of it that way. This was her third Olympic medal, an upgrade on the bronzes she won in Turin and Vancouver.
“I saw Elise come in and I thought I could stop her but she kept going. We were always going to fall when that happened. When I fell I was so pissed, and so sad. But I looked up and saw the Korean girl had fallen also so I thought maybe I can still do something. Elise got DQd and I got my silver medal, which is like a gold medal to me. But hey, this is short track so that’s what happens.”
You can say that again. And again. And again . . .
