"And don't worry, I'll be wiping egg off my face for weeks and I've already ordered my dinner of humble pie and crow, which I'll eat as soon as I'm able to remove my foot from my mouth. When I declared the 21-year-old American invincible, I wrote that I felt a bit like "a shipbuilder calling the Titanic unsinkable." So put on your lifejackets and get to safety—I must go down with the ship I built."
"The closest comparison I can come up with to what I saw on Friday night is when the gymnastics GOAT Simone Biles got the "twisties" in Tokyo and withdrew from the team event, the mental pressure making her unable to complete moves that were previously easy for her to land. But that disorientation happened to her almost immediately, in her first Olympic event."
Ilia Malinin entered the Olympics as the overwhelming favorite after a commanding short program. Expectations of an unbeatable "Quad God" were high, but the free skate produced repeated falls and a surprising eighth-place finish. The performance showed disorientation and mental pressure, drawing comparison to Simone Biles's "twisties" in Tokyo. Malinin had already delivered three programs at the Games ranging from solid to incredible, and he needed only a middling free skate to secure gold. The collapse undermined perceived certainties about his invincibility and shocked observers in Milan.
Read at Slate Magazine
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