If there’s an American Olympic athlete who can relate to what Ilia Malinin went through on Friday, Feb. 13, it would be Simone Biles.
Malinin — nicknamed ‘The Quad God’ — entered the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics as the favorite in the men’s figure skating competition — he was a two-time reigning world champion and four-time U.S. national champion. But, there’s a different level of pressure to perform on the Olympic stage. Malinin’s long program turned into a nightmare, and the skater finished outside of the medals in eighth place.
At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Biles — a seven-time Olympic gold medalist — entered those Games with expectations to win five gold medals, only to struggle with the ‘twisties’ and withdraw from some events. She went home with silver (team event) and bronze (balance beam) medals.
Biles was in attendance at Milano Ice Skating Arena for Malinin’s disappointing long program on Feb. 13, after which Malinin admitted that he ‘was not ready to handle’ the Olympic pressure.
In the aftermath of Malinin’s upsetting performance, Biles was among a number of notable athletes who reached out to him, and the two spoke on Tuesday, Feb. 17.
‘Just for someone to validate his feelings and to know we’ve gone through the same things, but you can still come out on top,’ Biles told Olympics.com. ‘While I was telling him some of what I thought he might be going through or how to move forward from this, he was like, ‘Exactly this. Exactly.’ He was like, ‘You finally just said it.”
Malinin had a seemingly comfortable five-point lead after the short program, but fell twice and did not fully complete other elements of his difficult long program.
‘I was really worried about how his mental health was going to be,” Biles told Olympics.com. ‘When you’re expected to skate a performance of your lifetime and you don’t deliver, I worry how that affects his mental (health) and how the world is going to view that.
‘I’ve been through that firsthand and so I really went into protection mode.’