2026 Winter Olympics: What has gone wrong for British short track speed skating?
Eight years later, the latest UK Sport funding allocation totaling just under £2 million for short track, figure and long track speed skating has been made available.
What has happened to many Olympic sports in Britain is short-lived; They need to perform at the Games to receive more funding, but without funding they struggle to achieve success.
Asked what work was being done to fix the short track, British Olympic Association (BOA) president Dame Katherine Grainger told BBC Sport: “For as much potential as we have in this team, there’s a lot more untapped.
“This is not a sport that is our heritage, which opens the door; we need to learn from other countries where we can.”
Add in the fact that there are few sports in the world more chaotic and unpredictable than short track.
Christie was Britain’s best-known speed skater a decade ago when she won three gold medals at the 2017 World Championships, but a series of crashes and disqualifications ruined her Olympic dreams in 2014 and 2018.
And this year Treacy got lucky, too. Take the 1,000 meter final; Usually there would be six racers in this race, but in Milan there were nine racers as three athletes advanced to the medal race after being illegally hampered in their semi-finals.
Would Treacy, who was running third when she tangled with Liu, have won a medal if there had been fewer men on the track? After all, assumptions don’t put cash in the bank.
Treacy could not hide his disappointment over the funding when speaking to the BBC after the final.
“I wish we had a little more support throughout the Olympic cycle,” he said. “We don’t even have an ice center safe enough for competitions in England.
“We need to look at ourselves in the UK and see that we need a facility where we can train at the highest level, rather than going to other countries.”
Treacy is right that there is no place in Britain that could host an international short track race because there are no tracks around the border with the soft boards needed to protect racers when accidents occur.
