
Falling Short at the Olympics: Ilia Malinin’s heartbreak and the long road to resilience.
Favored to win, Ilia Malinin’s Olympic free skate ended in two falls after a failed quad axel, costing him gold to Mikhail Shaidorov. The piece uses his moment of setback to explore how athletes process public failure and plot comebacks, drawing on stories like Lindsey Jacobellis, Steven Gerrard, Simon Kerrigan, Bernhard Langer and Amanda Anisimova to illustrate strategies such as reframing failure, separating personal worth from performance, and leaning on sports psychology for long‑term resilience.













