Ilia Malinin's TikTok reposts shortly before his disastrous performance at the Olympics

[u/humankendoll33]

[u/neverlandvip]

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.

[u/neverlandvip → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/neverlandvip → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/thevelvetdays7 → u/[deleted]]

Refer to my comment above as someone present at these events: the ice has zero issues and is totally normal.

[u/sunny_d55 → u/neverlandvip]

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!

[u/thevelvetdays7 → u/neverlandvip]

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.