MILAN — Rubbin’ is racin’, as a wise old philosopher once said, but when rubbin’ turns to wreckin’, bad things happen.
Four years after her heartbreak in Beijing, short track speedskater Kristen Santos-Griswold again struggled in the Olympics, falling — or getting knocked to the ice — multiple times in an ultimately frustrating night that left her locked out of the medal final race.
“It wasn't the ice, it wasn't anything,” Santos-Griswold insisted afterward. “it was blades hitting blades, or stubbing off a block.”
In the quarterfinals, Santos-Griswold’s race required four separate restarts after the five racers — later trimmed to four after China’s Chutong Zhang was disqualified for collisions — struggled again and again to get through the opening turns. Still, she recovered enough to finish second and advance to the semifinals.
But she faced troubles getting through a fast pack, and when her skate hit an inside block, she lost so much time on the leaders that she was unable to close the gap.
“I know I'm fast, I know I can make moves,” she said after her final race. “I was confident in getting off the [starting] line. I was like, I can fight for this, but then immediately we had some contact and it was just too big to recover from. That was really disappointing, that I didn't even get a shot, but that's part of sport.”
Relegated to the B Final, without a hope of a medal, Santos-Griswold again ran into trouble, getting tangled up in a three-skater crash that ended her night once and for all.
“We're all out there fighting to make it out of the rounds, fighting to get on the podium, to get on top of the podium, and I think that that's something that's a little bit different about the Olympics,” Santos-Griswold said. “It's not like an accumulation of points, you've got one shot, and we're all going to go out there and take it.”
Santos-Griswold will next race in the 1000m on Saturday, the same event that bedeviled her in Beijing. In that race, she was leading in the final lap when a collision with Italy’s Arianna Fontana ended her night and her Olympic dreams.
“Last time I was so nervous leading up to races. I'm still nervous leading up to races, so that's a lie if I say I'm not,” she said. “But I’m trying to take it day by day and enjoy the experience.”