When 21-year-old figure skating superstar Ilya Marinin surprised everyone with a below-average performance in the men’s single skating event, dropping from first to eighth due to an error-filled free skate program, he cited the pressure as one of the reasons for his struggles.
“It was tough with all this pressure, all the media, and just being an Olympic gold medal candidate,” he said immediately after the result. “It was too much to handle.”
In an interview with TODAY on Tuesday, Malinin made his most extensive comments since the free skate, admitting he was not ready for the Olympic spotlight.
“To be honest, it’s not a fun feeling. To be most honest, there are just so many eyes, so many attentions,” he said of the anticipation he felt in Milan. “If you’re not ready to fully embrace it, it can really hit you. So I think not being fully ready to embrace it may have been one of the mistakes I made heading into the free skate.”
Marinin, who has achieved overwhelming results in international competitions, spoke honestly and vulnerablely about her mental struggles at the Olympics. But the problems he experienced aren’t necessarily new.
“Pressure begins with a shift or change in mindset, attitude, or perception,” says mental training consultant and therapist Robert Andrews. He previously worked with seven-time gold medalist Simone Biles, who famously had mental struggles during the Tokyo Olympics.
“(Malinin) said he was struggling with negative thoughts, and that will change the internal pressure,” Andrews said. “And when internal pressure changes, the body usually reacts in a not-so-good way.”
Ms. Andrews was not working with Ms. Biles when she was suffering from Tweeties. Biles said this was a result of the mental strain of competing in the Olympics. But he said there is a line between Biles and Marinin, who has struggled on the Olympic stage.
“These meltdowns, or whatever you want to call them, are always associated with stress,” Andrews says.
Sports psychologist Michael Gervais, who has worked with athletes at four Olympics, said Marinin may have been imagining the potential fallout from a poor performance when he took to the ice for the free skate.
“Our brains are designed to survive,” said Gervais, who also worked in the NFL and most recently with the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks.
“We have a bias towards survival. What that means is that our brains are highly equipped and are scanning the world for all dangers,” he said. “So what he was doing in that moment was his brain was doing what most brains do, which is scanning the world for any threats. There are a lot of threats, not physical threats, but there are a lot of threats in the world championship.”
The concept of pressure and high expectations is not unique to Marinnin, but different Olympians have different mechanisms for dealing with it.
For example, Dutch speed skater Jutta Lierdam told NBC News that she can’t concentrate on outside opinions and pressure. Ms Readam, who is also known as the fiancée of internet personality Jake Paul, said she had spent “years” trying to reprogram her brain to stop being distracted by outside noises.
Meanwhile, American speed skater Erin Jackson told NBC News that she welcomes the pressure because it pushes out her laid-back personality and gives her performances an edge.
To be fair, Marinin entered the Olympics with perhaps the most attention of any American athlete. And he wasn’t just expected to win a medal, he was expected to jump the difficult jump that only he could do and win the gold medal by a wide margin.
Marinin has been winning international competitions for most of the past three years, but the Olympics are a completely different stage and a new level of pressure. Marinin himself alluded to the weight of the Winter Olympics when he was overheard saying after the free skate that his performance would have been different had he been selected for the 2022 Beijing team.
“The reason Olympic competition is so high-pressure is because there are only a handful of chances to win a medal, and it’s seen as a lifelong pursuit,” says Michael Heck, a therapist who works with Andrews at the Sports Performance Institute.
After the skate, Malin said that a “traumatic moment” and negative thoughts flooded into his head before the skate, although he did not reveal specifics. Heck said the problems may have started before the Olympics.
“Athletes have to take all kinds of precautions to maintain their integrity as competitors and stay focused on their motivation,” he said. “If there’s unresolved trauma, it’s going to come to the surface because whatever he was dealing with hasn’t been dealt with yet. So he won’t be able to take precautions and at some point he’s going to be flooded.”
So if Marinin decides he wants to return to the French Alps Olympics in 2030, will he be able to address the issues that prevented him from performing at his best in Milan? The short answer is yes.
Andrews said there are a number of practices he would implement for someone in Marinin’s position, from trying to train the subconscious mind to desensitization techniques to ensuring trauma is processed. All of this is aimed at what Andrews calls a “systematic approach through intervention.”
“You can train your mind to go exactly in the direction you want to go,” says Andrews.
Ultimately, Marinin’s fall could make him an even better competitor going forward.
“His reality is that he went through an embarrassing and humbling experience,” Heck said. “But through a mindset of excellence, I accept this as a very difficult part of my process. You can really learn from being humble.”
Gervais added: “This is a very emotional experience and the field of sports psychology has some best practices for navigating these experiences. I don’t know him, but I think his future is very bright.”
