Christie skates through pain to win World Cup bronze

Triple World Champion Elise Christie was not satisfied despite picking up her first World Cup medal of the short track season, in Hungary.

The 27-year-old Scot finished third in the 1,000m final, behind Korea’s Choi Min-Jeong and Canada’s Kim Boutin, overcoming a thigh injury to skate to the medal.

The World Cup in Hungary was the first of the season and Christie injured her leg in Thursday’s preliminary rounds, meaning she finished fourth in the 1500m and missed out on a final place over 500m.

She bounced back to make Sunday’s 1,000m final, and raced through the injury to take her now familiar spot on the World Cup podium.

"I'm not very happy with it,” Christie admitted.

"There was a point where I didn't even know if I was going to skate in the semi-finals because of the pain in my leg.

“In the final, I didn't really feel like me. I don't feel like I have the same power and I don't feel that I can turn as much as normally.

"If I'm coming third with a bad leg, then there's hopefully more to come when my leg is better in a few weeks.

"At the start of today, I didn't think that I was tough enough mentally to go on and deal with this.

"But I managed to go through and win a medal which I'm obviously not happy with.

"I think anyone who wants to be at the top can never be happy with a bronze but it could've been a lot worse."

Elsewhere in Budapest, Christie’s teammate Charlotte Gilmartin finished seventh in the 1500m B final, while Jonathan Moody went out in the 1500m heats, with Farrell Treacy going out at the same stage of the 500m and 1000m.

Sportsbeat 2017