The weight of Olympic pressure — and how athletes can prepare

MILAN — Ilia Malinin’s face said it all.

As he stood on the center of the ice on Friday following his free skate, he couldn’t hide his angst and confusion, his frustration — and sheer heartbreak.

The gold medal, which just moments before had felt like a near-certainty, was now completely out of reach. Everything he had worked for over the past four years, and a lifetime really, was over in four disastrous minutes.

Malinin, the two-time reigning world champion with an unbeaten streak dating back to 2023, finished in a staggering eighth place. There would be no medal, no place on the podium, just questions from dozens of reporters about what went wrong.

“I thought that all I needed to do was go out there and trust the process that I’ve always been doing with every competition,” Malinin, 21, said. “But of course it’s not like any other competition. It’s the Olympics. It was really just something that overwhelmed me, and I just felt like I had no control.”

While it might be little consolation to Malinin in this moment, he is far from the only high-profile athlete in recent years to fall victim to the unique pressure of expectations at the Olympic Games as the world watches on, especially when expected to win. Simone Biles, the greatest gymnast in history, was sidelined for most of the Games in 2021 as she dealt with the “twisties,” a mental block which creates a loss of awareness in the air. Mikaela Shiffrin, the all-time winningest Alpine skier on the World Cup circuit, has notoriously struggled at the Games. Despite being a favorite for gold in multiple events in 2022, and competing in six races, Shiffrin walked away empty-handed. She hasn’t reached the podium in either of her races in 2026, with one event remaining. And Malinin’s predecessor Nathan Chen, a multiple-time national and world champion, had a devastating Olympic debut in 2018, finishing fifth overall.

Biles and Chen were both in attendance on Friday, and…