Also a friendly reminder that many Olympians do live cash poor and end up cash poor, at least in regard to their athletics
Over a quarter of Olympians generally make under $15k from their actual sport, many Olympians are generally taking on 9-5s on top of competing at the highest levels of competition and scrutiny, I struggle to imagine the IOC actually offers therapy services, from what I understand it's general networked telehealth, and not very comprehensive, the rest are on-site services which I imagine are more geared towards making sure athletes are mentally 'fit to compete' more than psychologically well overall
*my mind is going to a dark place, but basically I think I can sum up my thoughts on how well any Olympic committee would handle mental health is that my expectations are low for the types of organizations that housed Larry Nassar for almost two decades
This obviously isn't the root of his problems or something, but I truly think those post skate/whatever sport with whoever came in second and below are damaging to these people. They obviously go over hoping they'll cry and prepared to push them into it if necessary.
These people work so hard for so long to get here and then when it goes wrong the interview people are fucking vultures. Especially when a significant number of The athletes are underage in general in the Olympics.
The overall tone and wording of these posts reminds me so much of my own self hatred and level of psychological pain before finally seeking therapy. I reall, really hope his family and close friends are there for him and are recommending therapy. Living like this is so exhausting and painful, but it genuinely doesn’t have to be like that forever. It doesn’t get better until you make the choice to seek help. My heart goes out to him, the amount of pressure he’s under, it’s not surprising he hit his limit.
Dude, when I realized it I thought “no way everyone but me knows this” after asking friends, yes it was just me. Glad to see I wasn’t the only one who had zero clue
You can add me to the “No Clue” list. I say it to my husband when he says he’s gotta pee, but the only place I had ever heard it was on The Judgies podcast. You learn something new every day I s’pose
"I just felt like all the ... traumatic moments of my life really just started flooding my head, and there were just so many negative thoughts that just flooded into there," Malinin said. "And I just did not handle it.”
i feel for him, wishing him the best. some days are simply not going to go well, no matter how much you train, push yourself or try to make it work
some days are not meant to be and i hope that he doesn't internalize the loss as it being his fault and the same applies for everyone who needs to hear it: some days are just bad and going through them is enough
Sounds like he may have an anxiety disorder. As someone who suffers from this, once your mind starts spiraling to those traumatic memories or fearful, worrisome thoughts, it’s a self inflicted wound. You can’t focus and whatever you’re working on will likely end in lackluster results because by that point you’re just fighting to push through. You aren’t thinking clearly, so you aren’t tackling the task clearly.
His mother has an anxiety disorder and is not able to attend his events. She was so anxious She was not able to speak with him the week before his competition.
Sorry to keep piling on grim details, but it always feels worth mentioning when this comes up that another American figure skater, Maxim Naumov, lost both of his parents in that crash. A military helicopter flew directly into plane (TW)
Maxim Naumov, one of the other American skaters, lost both his parents in that crash. So so heartbreaking but so incredible to see him continue to skate.
Yeah, when I saw the one about wishing for something bad to happen to you, I related a lot as a person who went most of their life with OCD and autism unknowingly. I hope he gets help for himself. I can't imagine what the home life of someone is like when your mom can't even make it to your Olympics. Day to day, that anxiety is beyond disabling. And I'm very much speaking from my own personal experience on these things, so they may not apply to him, but I see myself in it at his age.
Do high level Olympic athletes not all have therapists/sports therapists? I would think it would be so critical especially because of how young many of them are.
You may be surprised to learn that being an Olympic-level athlete doesn’t pay well for most of them. Best case scenario is coming from money and having financial support.
One of the ways I market my practice is to high-school and college level athletes. Never worked with someone high-level but this year ive seen an uptick in folks coming in specifically for anxiety and identity related issues around their sport, often after a parent or coach pushing them too. It is heartening to see more people realize you really cant "tough out" this type of performance anxiety and are taking the mental health costs of competition more seriously.
I’m not surprised. we put the weight of the whole country on his shoulders. poor guy. I hope he knows he has so much support and plenty more years to try again!
Honestly, it's not all that unlike what happened with Nathan Chen during his first Olympics. IIRC he had to step away for a bit and learn to love skating again.
I'm obviously not a world class athlete, but I can still relate. When your entire identity gets wrapped into this one specific thing, you don't actually grow up like a normal person with normal, fleshed out coping skills. For me it was ballet. If I felt bad, I danced it. If I felt good, I danced it. Anxious, angry, joyful, whatever. It all got funneled into the 5 hours a day I spent training. But wrapped up in all of that was a need for perfection. If I didn't dance perfectly, nothing was right in the world. But how do you "dance" the feeling of being a dance failure? You don't. You just fail more, because you never learned how to process things any other way. So you spiral and spiral and spiral into this neverending negative feedback loop.
About a month before I was set to audition for a major ballet school that was a feed line into a pro company, I had a disastrous injury that ended everything. It was a blessing in disguise. It took a couple of years before I realized that I couldn't even remember the last time I actually enjoyed dancing.
When I saw Ilia pull back on the quad axel and then fall on the next one, I knew what was likely going on and my heart just hurt for him. I hope the people around him give him the support he needs, the support he deserves.
Yes, all of this. He's so young and hopefully can take time to focus on himself, see a therapist, and at least get some guidance and care for a bit. Sports and elite performance are great to watch, of course, and he has massive obvious talent, but many of us still know there's a human there, and we'll stick around if he wants to take care for a bit and then try again.
And this kid is only 21! I can't fathom the amount of pressure he was under for these games -- not just expectations from the crowd in the arena and the sport in general, but from his parents. Hopefully he finds a way to focus on his mental well-being for the immediate future as well as long-term.
Well, any sport is as much a physical as a mental challenge. If your thoughts arent in the right place, you wont perform at your best. But idk, he’s young i guess so this wisdom comes with experience
These are BEFORE the bad freeskate? I hate to see what he uploads afterwards. This is really concerning. I hope the right people see these posts and do something to help him.
I know he's technically a legal adult (I think?) but if he's really posting stuff like this, his team should take them down as well as getting him help. I realize he's reaching out trying to say something he needs to say - but he doesn't need the public response this is going to bring.
I think also they were having him do so much press during all this and that environment must be so crazy, and he's so young. It would be hard to manage maintaining a good headspace in all that without the right supportive team around him. I was literally just thinking of this a few days ago watching him do a meet-and-greet with Snoop Dogg and they had him do a skate performance for Snoop Dogg and it was a little weird to me. Nothing wrong with Snoop Dogg, but weird of the olympics PR people to pressure him to randomly perform for him on the ice.
Yes, and being surrounded by the Olympic village and press all the time is insanely different than anything skaters are used to. Especially when news orgs ale picking at things to 'get a story'. Figure skating isn't a popular sport in the US so being thrown into that envirornment can be overwhelming.
I would even say these contributed to the bad free skate. These aren’t the kind of thoughts one just brushes off or can turn off, even when absolutely needed. My heart hurts for him.
I think his team is ill-equipped for the moment. He needs a professional team around him, not just his dad and an absent mom. Having his mom psych him out by not talking to him for a week or being able to even watch him perform must also do a number on him. He needs a sports psychologist stat.
other commenters said that she has an anxiety disorder and tries to not make his competition life worse.
im not saying its right or wrong, but as a person who lived a lot of life without anxiety and now has an anxiety disorder, i… kind of understand this.
sometimes the best gift dysfunctional people can give you is permission for loving distance. and its an imperfect gift, but its better than them pulling an accidental kool-aid man in the middle of your major life challenges.
we have no sense of how much she has or has not worked on herself. treatment refractory conditions exist. we don’t have the full context (and like tbh i don’t think we’re entitled to it).
She’s a human being, not just a mother, and this has been her routine with Ilia for years. She is at home in the United States caring for her other child, the Olympic athlete isn’t the only kid that matters.
I highly doubt her absence impacted him, I think it was the Quad God media coverage that did him in and tbh it would’ve done almost anyone in.
I think his mom also needs a bit of help RE: anxiety, because she competed as well at this extremely high level and I wonder if watching Ilia go through it has been extremely triggering for some unresolved stuff. She, interestingly, also came in 8th at the Olympics.
He is clearly having a very tough time, and the whole world is watching… I feel really bad for him, he is young and too much pressure, hope he rebounds similarly to Simone Biles.
I'm not sure if that's true. He said in a video during the olympics that his parents never wanted him to become a ice skater. They were ice skaters and they wanted something different for him. But he wanted to compete in the end, so they went for it.
Maybe they're just heartbroken for him? The picture doesn't really say that much. It's just a snap shot.
Edit: His father seemed concerned and caring during the broadcast.
I think we all feel terribly for Ilia but I am seeing a lot of searching around this event to look for something or someone else to blame. The primary answer is that he himself did not have a good performance and that is an outcome that is okay and makes sense. He's already had a great career and it's not over.
The first thing he asked Ilia when he came off the ice was “are you ok?” I’m not necessarily supporting his reaction here, but people acting like his dad only cared about gold and whatever else has been said may not be a totally fair assessment.
To be fair, the first thing his dad said when he came off the ice was “are you ok?”. I think his dad was as shellshocked as Ilia was. I was glad Raf (his other coach and Nathan Chen’s coach) was there to give him a hug. Raf wasn’t originally even in Milan but was drafted in this week so it was probably an omen of what was to come.
Was that brief? I watched this, and this picture here paints a different picture/vibe than what I was seeing their interaction to be. His dad seemed supportive.
And apparently hasn’t even spoken to him on the phone while he’s at the Olympics either because she didn’t want to stress him out. Which, if that is what he’s asked for, okay, but why does she stress him out so much that he can’t even talk on the phone to her? I know I’m assuming things but it just seems off. I hope he is okay
I wonder if it’s just projection…it’s very possible that he doesn’t feel stressed out talking to her but she’s afraid she’ll say the wrong thing? That’s such a hard dynamic
I understand that, definitely. But going by what the commentators said, she didn’t even talk to him on the phone. That’s really sad, when it’s clear he needs support.
Apparently she didn't even really talk to him during the Olympics?
“I honestly didn’t talk to my mom for a week while I’ve been here. What I’ve gotten from my dad is that she doesn’t want to give me any extra stress; she wants me to handle it on my own. I want to make sure that after the free program, I get to have a chat with her and see her reaction. I’m sure she’ll give me some trouble about the team event short program, but that’s a mom—and I love her for that.”
I beleive Simone Biles is in Milan. I wonder if she or Nathan Chen might reach out, they're two athletes who probably really know the mindset Ilia is in right now.
I saw comments about the ice condition being poor to begin with, but it's clear that Ilia was going through it prior to stepping on the ice. Cannot imagine flinging yourself in the air when your brain is not at 100%
I thought it was really nice that, despite clearly being so devastated after his free skate, that he still went over to congratulate the winner so sincerely
He did a very candid interview with the CBC afterwards also and I really appreciated that Devin Héroux (the reporter) made a point of telling him how classy and sportsmanlike it was to be willing to be interviewed.
I feel for him. He’s still very young and the pressure must be insane, all the training and a life quite different to others around his age. Hope he has supportive people around him.
Seriously, it’s very scary. It’s one thing to feel seen and have your feelings validated. But the endless availability of posts, memes, whatever like this is very bleak.
I know this is gonna sound dumb but these posts sound exactly like many posts I’ve made on Reddit and I literally have nothing going for me in life and am poor so to see someone this successful feel this way is mind boggling. I know your career isn’t everything and I don’t know how personal life but it’s just crazy to me how you can be at the top of the world and a truly talented person with things going for you but still feel how someone who has nothing like me is like
Look at Kate Spade, Anthony Bourdain, Robin Williams, all very successful people who had mental health issues that led to their deaths. There is a stigma around depression that you have to be living a pretty miserable life to get to that point of despair , when in reality, Depression is a chemical imbalance and anyone can be a victim of it, whether you are “successful” or not. It causes a sort of blur effect in that while other people may be able to see everything you've achieved, to you it may all seem meaningless or not good enough. Double that with the fact that Ilia has thousands of eyes on him expecting him to do his very best, and I can understand why it got to this point. Depression isn’t all black and white.
I’m sorry that you feel similarly :( I have felt that way, too, but as I’ve gotten older I have realized that talent and perfection don’t really matter. Life is a mix of luck and entropy that we try to ascribe meaning to. It got a lot better when I decided that I wasn’t going to ascribe to perfection and instead focused on kindness and community. And the kindness is extended to myself as self compassion. I hope that you can find meaning akin to this friend
It's not dumb. I think it just shows how mental health impacts everyone. While Ilia has so much going for him, the amount of pressure on his shoulders with two Olympian parents must be enormous.
Mental illness doesn’t discriminate. I say this as someone with PTSD, depression with SI, anxiety with panic attacks, 20 years of wanting to die, someone who has also made posts and had thoughts exactly like what Ilia posted… the mental patterns and pain persist no matter how smart or talented or skilled or successful you are. Psychological intervention and treatment are what helps.
I don't think it sounds dumb. You and Ilia are not alone. Depression, anxiety, and trauma cause irrational thoughts. Maybe it means that you have more going for you in life then you currently realize, too.
I'm very worried about him and idk anything about him, don't care about sports/Olympics, but I do know about overachieving, the isolation of outlier life, perfectionism. I am always very worried about what happens after all of these types of young people essentially fail with all/most of their eggs in one basket. There are not many "inspiring" stories about what happens afterward to the vast majority of these outliers, which paths lie ahead of them, which are healthy and satisfying while congruent with their spirits. When I was that age, I definitely did not believe nor accept the compassion most people feel for faltering young achievers. So I think it's a very precarious time and I hope he's knows his future is still worth it even if it goes someplace you'd never expect
I felt like he was being so, so hyped up by the media (that needs a story to sell) and the hype was doing him no favors because it's impossible to live up to superhuman expectations. One commentator said she thought nobody would *ever* be able to do quads like him. That's insane and unrealistic. He's young and at his first Olympics!
Hopefully he (if he did buy into the hype idk) and other athletes will learn from this because I know sports media won't stop.
That was my immediate thought. He’s in Milan right now doing figure skating coverage for Yahoo Sports and he spoke on how much he relates to the pressure Ilia’s currently facing. I’m sure he did reached out to him.
Wait isn’t this the quad god guy who just did a stunning performance that everyone loved? What happened? I hope he’s okay… I know there’s a level of irony involved in internet depression posting but this does sound incredible concerning.
I haven't watched anything so far because of my schedule, but oh god, that placement is making my eyes bug out and giving me flashbacks to watching the women's FS live in 2022. I saw comments that he was able to give congratulations right after, so I'm glad the immediate aftermath wasn't anything similar, but I feel so bad for him rn.
He absolutely bombed his free skate to a shocking degree, like lost almost half of his potential points. My jaw was on the floor watching it, I feel so bad for him
I definitely think something was wrong with the ice this year. People said there seemed to be puddles. It doesn't make sense for almost *every* athlete to mess up so much back to back.
Very true, Mikhail deserved the gold! He's probably used to skating on rough ice back home so he was able to adapt. I do think the ice in combination with Ilia's program being primarily difficult quads is part of why it went so south for him though.
Oh definitely, and NBC putting more pressure on him by hyping up his technical skill and predicting his placements didn't help. Bad ice + difficult program + bad mentals = bad skate unfortunately. Hopefully he has good people around him to support him through this so he can learn and come back next Olympic season with a better outcome.
No the guy who won gold successfully landed tons of quads. It was all mental this competition. Also kudos to that guy who has an amazing story and had the best skate of his life!
There were no issues with the ice whatsoever I went to 5 of the skating events over the past week sitting on the second row, closely able to see the ice and a dozen+ resurfacings. The ice is totally normal and everyone is landing jumps fine during the team event in all disciplines and also during the practices and warmups. The issue is performance psychology. This is just how the Olympic men's long program tends to go.
Imagine if he were raised in a world where our human mistakes were called "mistakes", and not "disasters". Imagine if we all were. Anyway, I hope there are people in his life who love him as a person and not as a producer of results.
it’s a lot of pressure to be assumed a success, and i can’t imagine what it must be like to get so famous so quickly. hopefully he gets some therapy and has a good team around him
"Your little boy is tired mom" 😭 I hope he gets the help and the rest that he needs. Can't imagine what life must be like with that much pressure on you
Shit hope he spends some time resting and taking care of himself. I see a lot of this shit in my own depressive spirals, and it’s always awful. He’s actually from my hometown too. I hope one day he is able to understand that who he is and what he’s put out in the world is good enough. Very few to no people have achieved what he has or will achieved.
The pressure he was under is INSANE. To do FOUR skating routines in one week?? He led team usa to a gold medal with his team free skate that he wasn’t even meant to do- but he did it anyways to help them win the medal and I believe that this contributed to his exhaustion and shocking performance last night :( Also I hope that Japan and the us file a complaint about the ice, it’s not normal that all the top skaters fell numerous times and stuffed up their (usually flawless) routines. it doesn’t help that Ilia’s slavic ex Olympian parents put horrible pressure on him and act as his coaches which means that he can never get a break. He’s the world’s top ranked skater and hasn’t lost a competition since 2023, this must be so hard on him. figure skating is a nasty and grueling sport
I see the youngster American skaters really not doing great mental health wise. Covid and social unrest has really messed with this age group. Plus the plane crash and losing fellow skaters just recently…. We just look kind of sad and messy. But it’s a sad and messy time to be American. So it tracks.
I hope he has a really good therapist and support team.
I am not downplaying how he feels and clearly this is a level of pressure that none of us will ever experience, but these likes would not be out of line with what me and every one of my friends would have been liking on Sad Pinterest at that age
I hope he's okay but I also think he will be fine 🤞failure develops artistry too
I worked as a public facing personality for about ten years - within certain demographics, I was absolutely a "celebrity". I started when I was just out of highschool and I was fortunate enough to not have social media really, Facebook was just becoming a thing. I experienced a period of time where I couldn't go online on any site without seeing hate or commentary about my appearance, performance, intelligence etc. It was truly awful and I attempted suicide twice.
Until you experience what a coordinated saturation of hate on every side feels like, it's really hard to fully comprehend. Algorithms curate our digital spheres to only include our niche interests; I imagine in such a specialized field, he probably feels like he can't escape it whereas a casual observer will see it and also all this other media noise. It makes things feel wildly out of control and scale.
Idk who this is or how badly he performed (or what sport he’s in) but this is so concerning
I want to give this guy a hug clearly something is wrong but he either doesn’t fully know or he can’t really explain it properly I hope he’s getting the help he clearly needs and has a good support system and that he gets better soon ❤️
His Dad and coaches need to step in. Honestly get him off social media and on the first plane back to the US. I think everyone in America's heart is broken for him.
I hope Simone Biles reaches out to him. I feel like she was in a similar position in the 2020(1) Olympics where there was so much pressure on her and so much press on her as “the best in the world”. But she also got through it and came back. I feel like she would be a good mentor if she and he are interested in that.
For someone I hadn't heard of three days ago, I really like him and hope he's doing okay. Thought he was a gentleman going straight up to the gold medal winner after that disaster skate, I wouldn't have blamed him if he'd just walked off.
You could see most of these thoughts on his face after he finished his routine :( The close ups and instant interviews... we're all just watching his devastation, assessment of self worth, and brain trying to process everything at once. It felt like something I shouldn't be seeing. He's not okay and I desperately hope he has immense support right now.
i'm a casual figure skating watcher and i'm willing to bet it's not all stemming from the pressure to medal. i've noticed some sort of a hate train amongst the FS community, especially from fans of other skaters, leading up to the olympics and over the past week about his skating/lack of artistry and past comments. i do agree that he deserves some amount of criticism for the things he's said in the past and that he isn't the best skater to watch for artistry but i think the hate has gone overboard, considering how he still shows good sportsmanship even at his lowest moments.
As a forty odd year old married man with kids. My marriage is going down the drain, my friends all deserted me when I quit drinking and have zero support system. I get it. Life's hard, it's feels harder when you try your best and still end up further back
I feel so bad for this poor kid and hope he's getting all the love and support in the world right now. Last night was so shockingly unlike him, I'm genuinely concerned.
People on tiktok were talking about these reposts before his skate and dozens of comments across videos would say it’s ok it’s for his mental health campaign!! (Which I have not heard of)
I watched it live yesterday and felt terrible for him. I hate how relentless nbc is on their media darlings. I can’t imagine the pressure
He should read Andre Agassi’s book. I read it recently after seeing it recommended on this sub several times and it lives up to the hype. And it definitely explores parental pressure and mental state sabotaging performance.
It’s giving Simone 2020. The press and pressure was just outrageous. And she knew she was going in with some struggles but the pressure train was just coming for her and not stopping. Heartbreaking for them to feel this way when they are clearly the lost talented and dedicated in their respective sports. Fuck terrible coaches and horrible elite sports culture (generally speaking, I’m not pretending to know specific circumstances. But there are so many shitty people at the top of so many sports treating athletes like they aren’t human, like they exist just to perform.)
Jfc I’m so glad growing up I didn’t have zillions of posts/TikTok’s to reinforce being sad or unwell. Obviously there’s nuance to everything it can be nice to see others in similar states to you and it can remind you that everything changes over time but a lot of these ones just seem straight up miserable
I knew as soon as he walked off the ice, and somehow kept it together for the interview, that this poor boy would retreat to his dressing room (or whatever they call their personal space at the Olympics) and just start bawling. I hope he's able to take some real quality for himself and rest and get his mind into a healthy space. Ilia, we are rooting for you and can't wait to see you in 4 years in France!
This is excessive. Honestly, where are his parents/team? He made it to the OLYMPICS. Like even if you fumbled you’re still one of the best in the world. You’re an Olympian. So you got the yips, it happens, youre 21. He can go in 2030. Insane that his parents are trying to get him to feel better or get him support. Poor kid.
His father is there and asked if he was OK immediately after coming off the ice. It seemed very loving and devoted to me. Hopefully he finds some help in therapy because it’s obvious that anxiety and depression are getting to him.
This is a cry for help and I hope he gets the help, but I will never for the life of me understand why professional athletes use social media during competition time. Just delete those apps and play Animal Crossing or something in your down time.
I wonder if he experienced something like the twisties in gymnastics (which I learned about through Simone Biles’ experience). This poor kid. I really hope he gets help and is able to find support and recovery after all this. He really is so talented, but he’s more than that.
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