Livingston speed skater dumped by text after Olympic heartbreak

Elise Christie of Great Britain cries after crashing during the Ladies' 500m Short Track Speed Skating final on day four of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea. Pic: Jean Catuffe/Getty Images

The 28-year-old said her Hungarian partner Shaolin Sandor Liu, 23, a fellow speed skater, couldn’t cope with how down she was after missing out on a medal in South Korea.

The short track star from Livingston said the rejection was the ‘final straw’ in what has been the worst year of her life and left her on the verge of quitting the sport.

Elise Christie disqualified from final Winter Olympic event

Elise, a triple world champion, fell in the 500m final and the 1500m semi-finals at the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang.

She was then disqualified from the 1,000m heats while competing with an ankle injury, which would ordinarily require six weeks of rehabilitation.

Shortly before the Games in February, her father had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and her relationship ended as she sank into a depression after she returned home.

She said: “The final straw was my boyfriend, I lost my whole support network.

“Losing Shaolin was the hardest part of it all I think.

“At my lowest point I lost my biggest support and I honest didn’t see it coming.

“I was split up with over a text message. I would have preferred if he had at least rang me.

“Shaolin just couldn’t cope with how down I was about the Games.

“He was in a different place because he had won a medal and he wanted to move forward in a different direction.”

This year has also seen Elise lose her coach and she was ripped off by cowboy builders who failed to finish extension work on her home.

She told the BBC: “I felt like I lost the Olympics before I even got there.

“The year on the whole just wasn’t right. 2018 is definitely the worst year of my life.

“I found out just before Christmas about my dad being sick. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer. It was a massive shock.

“That balance between getting home enough to see him with trying to train for an Olympic Games was very difficult.

“I wasn’t coping very well at that point, everything was just adding up and adding up.

“I lost my motivation after the Games and that was hard.”

Earlier this month, Miss Christie returned to competition as part of the British mixed relay team at the opening World Cup event of the season.

She says she is now focused on winning a medal at the next Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022.

Despite suffering at three Winter Olympics, Elise is one of the world’s most successful speed skaters and is widely respected by fellow competitors.

At the 2017 World Short Track Speed Skating Championships in Rotterdam, she became the first British woman to take the gold medal in the 1500m.

She went on to finishfourth in the 500m before taking a second gold in the 1000m and a bronze in the 3000m to clinch the overall gold.

That success saw Elise, who lives in Nottingham, become the first non-Asian skater to win the women’s overall world title in 23 years, earning plaudits from her fans and rivals.