Elise Christie proved she has several strings to her bow after taking her second World Cup win this season in her self-called weaker 1500m event at the final round in Dresden.
Christie became Britain’s first-ever short track World Cup champion after claiming silver at the test event in Sochi last weekend, that performance wrapping up the overall 1000m title.
But, rather than bid for more success in the 1000m, the 22-year-old Scot has chosen to focus on what she labelled her weaker events in Dresden, the 500m and 1500m.
Christie is the European champion in the 1500m and won silver in Nagoya in December as well as bronze in Sochi last weekend while she is yet to medal in the 500m this season.
And she proved that she has every much a chance of Olympic success in the 1500m as she does in the 1000m by claiming victory in the first of two races over the distance at the World Cup finale.
Christie, who won 1000m gold in Nagoya, beat Korean Kim Min-Jung for victory while Canada’s Marie-Eve Drolet beat off China’s Kong Xue to finish third in Dresden.
Of the Brits in individual action Kathryn Thomson, fresh from her selection for the European Youth Olympic Winter Festival, reached the repechage heats of the 1500m.
Alex Stanley also made the repechage heats of the women’s 1000m while Charlotte Gilmartin, who won 1500m bronze at the European Championships, was penalised in the preliminaries.
In the men’s 1500m Richard Shoebridge and Joshua Cheetham both reached the semi-finals while Jon Eley made the repechage semi-finals and Paul Stanley the quarter-finals of the 1000m.
Meanwhile neither the men’s or women’s British relay teams made it out of the heats of the 5000m and 3000m events respectively on Friday in Dresden.
© Sportsbeat 2013