CHARLOTTE Gilmartin improved on her opening PyeongChang Winter Olympics effort but was unable to reach the final of the women’s 1,500m short track speed skating event.
The 27-year-old from Redditch had been disqualified in the heats of the opening 500m competition, but bounced back to progress from the quarter-finals of Saturday’s 1,500m competition.
However, any hopes of reaching the final were ended when a fall ended her participation in the semi-finals.
British women’s number two Gilmartin, who then failed to progress from Tuesday’s 1,000 quarter-finals, said of her 1,500m semi-final: “The plan was to stay in the middle of the pack, sit there, be comfortable try and conserve as much energy for that sting at the end.
“I started to fall back a few places so I tried to then make one big move to jump up the inside of three people but just caught my edge and that was the end of it.
“It’s just unfortunate there was a groove in the ice that I managed to clip somehow, so that’s not how I wanted the 1,500m to end.
“That’s my favourite distance and the one I’ve medalled most in, so I was hoping to get through that and I definitely felt I had the legs to do it.”
Gilmartin is the 2017 British champion at 500m, 1,000m and 1,500m and finished second overall at the 2016 European Championships.
The 2018 Games brought further misery for Britain’s three-time world champion Elise Christie who crashed and injured herself in the 1,500m semi-finals before bravely recovering, only to be disqualified in the 1,000m quarter-finals. Christie had finished fourth in the previous 500m final.
