Everyfield

In December 2021, three-time Olympian Elise Christie retired from short track speed skating, broken and unwell. Elise tells her story.

In October 2014, Steve Wakeford, a sports broadcast editor, fell 70 metres whilst climbing a mountain known as Les Petites Jorasses in the French Alps. It was a fall that required him to be airlifted out of the mountains suffering from a number of serious injuries and resulted in him being temporarily left in a wheelchair - he is lucky to be alive. At the start of a long journey of rehabilitation, he began to ask himself some serious questions - 'Regardless of injury or trauma, why are we drawn to the mountains in the first place? Is risk an essential part of what we do? Perhaps most importantly, why is it that I am planning to climb the same route from which I fell?'