‘I don’t want to be in that dark place again’: Elise Christie on depression, skating and her new life

“This doesn’t feel different to a death,” Elise Christie says as she tries to build a new world without speed skating, the sport that has consumed half her life. Christie, a three-time world champion who also won 10 European titles, announced her retirement last month after a year which nearly took her life. Christie had been hoping to compete in her fourth Winter Olympics next month but, feeling let down by the sport and struggling with injury and her mental health, she says: “It’s like you’ve lost the most important thing in your life and the thing that you gave everything up for.”

Christie sits on a sofa at home in Nottingham and rubs her face gently. Earlier this evening she had broken the news to me, in a revelation she has not discussed publicly before, that loss and trauma drove her into a depression where she attempted to take her own life last April. We have also discussed how she is now trying to summon the resilience that usually defines her.

“I spent 16 years hammering away, trying to win constantly and it’s taken its toll,” the 31-year-old Scot says softly. Over the past year, because none of her world or European titles made any money, Christie had been working at Pizza Hut while chasing her Olympic dream. But last week, adjusting to her skating retirement, Christie started a different job. She now works part-time behind the till at a Shell garage as she considers two offers to transition to a different Winter Olympic sport.

It means that, while still hurting after everything she has been through, she is defiant and hopeful. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to leave everyone behind and create pain for them. I want to carry on. Sport has improved vastly with mental health the last four years, and so has