TRIPLE world short track champion speed skater Elise Christie has opened up on the night she was drugged and raped when 19 in her autobiography, Resilience.
The Great Britain star said "I went out, got drugged and then got raped by some random bloke."
The incident occurred after she had returned from the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games on a night out.
She was raped after meeting the man in a bar in Nottingham city centre.
Christie who has represented Great Britain at three Winter Olympics has spoken for the first time about her ordeal.
“It was a year before I told anyone at all about that night.
“I felt victim-shamed, almost, by what happened. I wasn’t left in a bush, battered and beaten up, so back then I thought: ‘It’s not rape.’”
In relating her experience Christie says she felt impaired and the body was not functioning. She just could not run away as she kept falling to the ground.
She believes her drink had been spiked and thus her inability to do anything.
When taken into a taxi she pleaded with the driver but to no avail as the perpetrator told him she was his girlfriend and drunk.
She adds: “I felt ashamed, which I now know is completely the wrong way to feel about this.”
Training for the 2022 Winter Games, she has battled back after mental health issues, online abuse and death threats.
Around Christmas 2018, Christie contemplated taking her own life, having suffered huge disappointment at that year’s Games in Pyeongchang.
Four years earlier, she had been targeted by South Korean fans online after a collision with Park Seung-hi at the Sochi Games.
She says her attacker had contacted her via Facebook to apologise.
Christie never went to the police, adding: “It’s too late I guess. I should have been braver.”
Christie has three world championship golds, but crashes, disqualifications and injury have stopped her winning an Olympic medal.
Knowing well she is not physically as strong as she used to be, Christie believes she still has the ability to fulfil her dream of winning a medal at the Olympics next year.
But it's just not about winning a medal but rather she would like to be remembered as "the girl who helped others turn their lives around and the girl who has turned her life around and has come back. That’s why I try to set that example.” - Agencies, October 4, 2021
