Malinin Redeemed

The pictures of his failure are almost unbearable: Ilia Malinin sprawled on the ice, trying to pull himself into his routine again. As the music ends, he clutches the sides of his face, framing a mix of shame and disbelief. I’d post the pictures here, but they are all protected by copyright, and it would be wrong to trample on the ownership of others. Malinin looks upward as if to appeal to the gods, but the sun has melted his waxen wings. He is not a god himself, but an earthbound crumple, just minutes into a new world of failure. None of this was supposed to happen to a man gifted with nearly supernatural talent.

Truth to tell, I’m not much of skating fan. Every child in Michigan learns how to skate, but there is skating and there is skating, and mine was rudimentary I couldn’t quite get the hang of skating backwards, or crossing one blade in front of the other. You had to master those skills to ascend in the sport, and in my case that was not to be.

But Malinin’s story is irresistible, especially the part about the aftermath of his failure. In the initial phase he parceled out blame. He wanted us to know that he could have done better if only he had competed four years ago, but the powers-that-be blocked his way. He was a fantastic talent in 2022, but only an official runner-up in the Olympic trials. Other people went to Beijing, and he missed the exposure and its attendant toughening. The soundbite has apparently been scrubbed from the Internet by people protecting Malinin from himself. Nobody likes a golden crybaby.

But for a very brief moment he continued to cry. It wasn’t his fault, it was the quality of the ice. There might be some truth in this self-exculpating claim, as we learn from our quadrennial exposure to curling. Ice is not the same as stainless steel. A lot depends on how it is laid down, the atmosphere in the arena, and the impact of competition. Hardly anyone gets a pristine surface, and you have to contend with imperfection.

But this, too, gave way in Malinin’s narrative, and he ultimately arrived at introspection and dignity. It’s me, he finally managed to say. I came in confident, expecting my triumph, and the universe taught me a lesson in humility. The noise was too much, the expectations, were crushing, and I took my self-evident mastery for granted. Like Simone Biles in the last edition of the Summer Olympics, he owned his failure and the mystery of performance. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, and even the most beautiful athletes occasionally screw up.

I stopped believing in the larger lessons of sport after the umpteenth doping scandal of the last several decades. Lance Armstrong taught me about deceit and self abuse, along with the ruthless ambition of some premier athletes. But Ilia Malinin seems to be something else: a mature young thinker capable of honest reflection, who may one day be rewarded for his spectacular athleticism.