Millie’s arrival has created a precious sense of equilibrium. For all that she felt engulfed by despair four years ago, walking through the rain to beg for help at hospital, she ended up meeting game farmer Connor Thomson at a subsequent rehab clinic, with Connor now the father of her child. “I have a daughter who’s healthy, and I’m now at the stage where my emotions don’t overwhelm me. I don’t have anything substantial in life, but I have what I need. I know that the path I ended up taking brought me my daughter, the best thing that ever happened to me.”
While she would love to be able to show Millie an Olympic medal, she no longer treats this as the only measure of her self-worth. “Before, I couldn’t even watch the Olympics. I was very broken, very angry. But I’m not like that now. Part of me is sad that I couldn’t produce what I was capable of, but my biggest role eventually is to get back involved with the sport in a supporting role. I’ve wanted to get myself back in a position where I can be useful.”
Other professional aspirations remain. She was passionate about setting up a gym with a creche for working mothers, although the move to Dundee has derailed any formulation of a business plan. “I’m hoping a bit of savings from the OnlyFans might help me get up and running,” she jokes, bleakly.
There is a more universal message she seeks to impart, a reassurance that even the most serious psychological distress can be surmounted. “I had a career of two halves. Outside the Olympics, I was winning everything, getting stronger all the time. But as our country only watches winter sports every four years, nothing turned out as it should have done. I was fighting a demon inside.”
Her closest confidantes, she says, are happy to see her “happy and content” once more, after enduring episodes of acute alarm. “I distanced myself from them for a while, but now they say: ‘She’s back.’ It’s a great relief. I am out the other side, and I hope I can encourage people to fight through the lowest moments. It’s sad to think about the way I was. I would love for other people to make it out of the way I did.”
While being an Olympian has a priceless cachet, Christie’s story is a timely reminder of the dreadful cost that can be suffered when it all goes wrong.
