Winter Olympics 2026 reside updates: Jordan Stolz wins silver on Day 13, ladies’s free skate determine skating to return

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles instantly empathized with Ilia Malinin after he completed off the rostrum within the males’s singles determine skating remaining on the Milan Cortina Olympics, the star gymnast advised Olympics.com on Tuesday.

Biles, watching from the stands in Milan, mentioned she was involved about how the burden of expectations would possibly have an effect on Malinin’s psychological well being, figuring out firsthand how troublesome it’s to carry out when the world expects gold.

After Malinin’s eighth-place end, Biles mentioned she reached out instantly, sending him supportive messages and her cellphone quantity. When they later met in Milan, her objective was to validate his emotions and remind him that setbacks below intense scrutiny are human — and survivable.

“I was really worried about how his mental health was going to be,” Biles mentioned within the interview. “When you’re expected to skate a performance of your lifetime, and you don’t deliver, I worry how that affects his mental and how the world is going to see that.

“I’ve been through that firsthand, and so I really went into protection mode.”