Christie gets her mental preparations right for Olympic challenge

The Great Britain athlete was a medal hopeful in all three of her events - 500m, 1,000m and 1,500m in Russia three years ago.

She was disqualified in the 1,500m and crashed out in the 1,000m semi-finals after receiving a third penalty.

And Christie, 27, became the subject of hostile abuse online following her disqualification in the 500m, when the 27-year-old tripped up South Korean superstar Park Seung-hi.

She admitted that the Twitter trolls went as far as death threats and her performance at Sochi led her to seek help from a sport psychologist.

"Eventually, I had to go and ask for some help," she admitted, ahead of the first ISU World Cup of the season in Hungary. "I just struggled with the fact that my sport had led to death threats.

"I couldn't link how that worked. Why is something that I dreamt of doing since I was a kid and love doing led to that?"

But Christie, a three-time world champion earlier this year, confessed that the help she received allowed her to overcome her fears of losing and improved her mentality towards competing dramatically.

"I really felt like without doing that there was no way I was going to unlock my full potential," she added.

"I was sick of going into championship and not winning because physically I felt capable.

"When I went to the last World Championships I just had no fear of losing medals, I just wanted to win and if that meant I lost medals, I didn't care."

Christie's superb displays over the last couple seasons have also won over the South Korean fans ahead of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics next February.

She added: "At the World Cup in Korea I was thinking, 'I'm going to get booed', I was preparing myself for the worst and then everyone ran at me and I couldn't get to my warm up.

"I think they were embarrassed for the people who had done what they did to me. It was definitely nice and a lovely surprise.

"It's like I get to be a bit lower profile at home and hide away from it all and I go out there and it's pretty intense. It's quite cool, they are mad about short track, which will make the Olympics really special."

Despite the welcoming reception, Christie revealed she serve a self-imposed social media ban during the Olympics.

"There could be copycats, people who think it's fun to try and wind people up," she added.

Sportsbeat 2017