Ilia Malinin reacts after competing during the men's free skate program in Milan on Friday.Francisco Seco/The Associated Press
Ahead of Friday night’s figure-skating implosion, The Globe’s Robyn Doolittle chatted with Calgary 1988 gold medalist Brian Boitano about Ilia Malinin.
Boitano must know that nothing is a lock in figure skating, or sports generally, or life. But like everyone else in Milan, he couldn’t help himself.
“The thing that I like about watching [Malinin] skate so much is that I feel comfortable,” he said. “I don’t feel nervous. I feel like I just trust him. I know it’s going to be good.”
Malinin wasn’t good. He was as far from good as you can be without one of your skate blades ripping loose and hitting a judge in the head.
Ilia Malinin’s shocking collapse rocks men’s figure skating podium
Malinin came to Italy to make the quad look easy. He couldn’t even make it look hard. He missed some jumps and bailed on others. The crowd had been so primed to witness greatness that they cheered his successful landings right as he was in the middle of blowing them.
Just getting to the end of his program was a kind of victory. Lesser competitors might have given up. Malinin finished eighth.
After enduring it in replay a few times, one wonders where this stands on the list of all-time chokes.
The ur-modern sporting collapse is Jana Novotna in the 1993 Wimbledon final. She was up 4-1 in the third set against Steffi Graf and cruising. Then she seemed to realize where she was, and lost five straight games. That loss was immortalized by Malcolm Gladwell in a New Yorker piece titled ‘The Art of Failure.’
Using Novotna’s meltdown as a roadmap, Gladwell explained the difference between choking and panicking. Choking is overthinking something that should have become instinctive. Experts choke.
Panicking is temporarily losing the ability to think at all. Amateurs panic.
Malinin choked. Even through a screen, you can see his wheels spinning as he goes into his jumps.
“Mentally, it was a weird feeling just going into the program,” Malinin told reporters afterward. “I just had so many thoughts and memories flood right before I got into my starting pose.”
Malinin fails to land a jump during his program on Friday.Andreas Rentz/Getty Images
A truly epic choke is comprised of several factors:
The choker should be better than just good. He or she should be widely acknowledged as great;
The stage upon which the collapse happens should be as big as possible, and the audience enormous as well;
It should be decided before the fact that the soon-to-be choker isn’t capable of choking. That he or she has already won, and that competing is a formality;
The mechanism of choking must have length, breadth and width. It can’t be flubbing one shot amidst dozens. It has to be missing a bunch of opportunities, all of them gimmes;
Lastly, the collapse must be total. No close seconds.
Malinin meets all of that criteria and then some. To hear people talk about him, he was the surest Olympic thing since Michael Phelps or Simone Biles. I would bet real money that his performance will be the most widely viewed event at these Games.
Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan, who won gold, greets Malinin after the competition.Francisco Seco/The Associated Press
Everyone has their own list of great chokes. The closest thing you might get to a consensus list features Novotna; Greg Norman at the 1996 Masters, blowing a six-shot lead on Sunday; Bill Buckner letting a grounder get through his wickets in the 1986 World Series; and Jean van de Velde at the 18th in the 1999 Open Championship.
Novotna didn’t lose on her own. Graf, the best women’s player of her generation, helped. Same thing with Norman. He didn’t just lose. Nick Faldo beat him.
Buckner was injured and having trouble bending over, but played anyway, and missed only once. Van de Velde was the 152nd-ranked player in the world when he blew it. He lost humiliatingly, but still overachieved.
Malinin has no real competition. His colleagues had functionally conceded the gold to him after the short program. And why not? The American hadn’t lost an event in nearly two years.
Considering all that, was it the greatest sporting choke ever? Yes, but only maybe. To make a final determination, we have to wait to see.
It won’t feel like it now, but that is in itself an achievement. Name two other guys who played in that ’86 World Series. Most people, even serious sports fans, can’t. But they know Buckner. Greatness isn’t strictly confined to success. There is a species of greatness reserved for those who risk everything, and lose. There can’t be a Mozart without a Salieri.
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The good news for Malinin is that the possibilities of his complete sporting career are suddenly much richer.
There’s something tedious about someone who is the unquestioned best at something. After a while, they render whatever they do inert. Usain Bolt did that to sprinting. Why bother watching if you know to an absolute certainty how it’s going to turn out?
Malinin was headed for Bolt status – which is not a bad thing. It would have made him a lot more money.
Now he’s something very different. Now he’s the hero on a quest.
Malinin is only 21 years old. He’s got at least one more Olympics in him. Because of this we already know what the main storyline going into French Alps 2030 will be – can Malinin redeem himself by winning an Olympic individual gold?
If he does, then the historic impact of Friday’s choke is dulled. It was the failure that amplified the impact of the eventual success. If he doesn’t win at an Olympics, or leaves skating early, then it’s the all-timer.
Novotna went on to win a Wimbledon title. Afterward, she said that she couldn’t remember the precise moment of victory. She had to ask a referee what had happened.
“You are in a zone,” she said of how things had changed in five years. “I was just so pleased.”
For the sake of a good story, I hope Malinin finds the same zone in four years time.