Scotland’s Elise Christie has booked her Team GB place for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics.
The world-bronze medallist, who once competed for Dundee Speed Skating Club, was one of five speed skaters named by the British Olympic Association in the short track squad for the games.
Christie, Britain’s highest-ranked speed skater on the world circuit, will go in the individual 500m, 1,000m and 1,500m events.
She is joined in Team GB by Charlotte Gilmartin, 23, John Eley, 29, Richard Shoebridge, 28, and Jack Whelbourne, 22.
The five athletes join the curlers and figure skaters already selected, bringing Team GB numbers to 21 so far, with Scots punching above their weight with 11 places.
There was disappointment, however, for Dundee teenager Murray Cochrane who failed to be selected despite impressing this year with seventh place at the World Short Track Juniors in Warsaw.
But his one-time Dundee Ice Arena training companion Elise Christie was thrilled after the announcement in Nottingham.
“I’m really proud to have been picked for my second Winter Olympics and I can’t wait to get out to Sochi and try to win medals for Team GB,” she said.
“I feel really lucky to have this opportunity and I’m so thankful to my team, support staff and everyone that has helped me get to where I am now. With the experience I’ve already gained from Vancouver 2010, I hope I can go to Sochi and do more than just take part this time.
“I want to compete for medals and I’m going to fight to be at the top of the pack.”
The first British woman in history to win an individual short-track speed skating medal at the World Championships, when she took 1,000m bronze in Hungary in March, Christie is the undoubted star of the squad and acknowledged as Team GB’s best hope for an Olympic medal.
The world No 1 in the 1,000m for much of the past two years, the 23-year-old finished on the podium in six out of seven World Cup races last season to become 1,000m world champion.
With a trademark fast start and front-leading style in a sport in which drafting behind opponents is more common, Christie made her Olympic debut as a teenager in Vancouver in 2010, her best finish 11th in the 500m. Having refreshed her goals, she now says she will not settle for being a double Olympian she wants to win.
“I never went to Vancouver thinking I was going to medal,” she said.
“I was chuffed with getting to the Olympics and just went out to see what I could do. Then I decided that after that it was either time to stop, or time to make a change and aim for a medal. And I thought, ‘Well, you know, why not?’”
Yet through illness and injury, participation at Sochi looked doubtful for the Livingston-born star.
She started this season with mumps. She then suffered the loss of her grandmother. She admitted this was especially traumatic as she was at a competition in Asia on the day of the funeral.
Then a heart-stopping crash at last month’s short-track World Cup in the Russian city of Kolomna threatened to extinguish her Olympic hopes. But she recovered to take bronze in the 1,000m.
The former Dundee speed skater also knows that if she reaches an Olympic final she might face two or three Chinese or Koreans the two strongest short-track nations who will inevitably race as a unit in the manner that Kenyan and Ethiopian runners gang up on opponents on the track.
Nottingham’s former world junior champion Jack Whelbourne is the youngestmember of the Sochi short track team, while John Eley’s selection will make Sochi his third consecutive Winter Games, having competed at both Turin in 2006 and Vancouver in 2010.