Simone Biles met with Ilia Malinin after figure skating final: ‘I went into protection mode’

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles immediately empathized with Ilia Malinin after he finished off the podium in the men’s singles figure skating final at the Milan Cortina Olympics, the star gymnast told Olympics.com on Tuesday.

Biles, watching from the stands in Milan, said she was concerned about how the weight of expectations might affect Malinin’s mental health, knowing firsthand how difficult it is to perform when the world expects gold. She recalled her experience at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, when she battled the “twisties” (a loss of spatial awareness) and withdrew from much of the competition. Biles, who had been expected to dominate, finished with a silver in the team competition and a bronze in the balance beam.

After Malinin’s eighth-place finish, Biles said she reached out immediately, sending him supportive messages and her phone number. When they later met in Milan, her goal was to validate his feelings and remind him that setbacks under intense scrutiny are human — and survivable. She said her words resonated with Malinin, reinforcing her belief that sharing lived experiences can help athletes process disappointment and move forward stronger.

“I was really worried about how his mental health was going to be,” Biles said in 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 view that.

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

Biles emphasized that her comeback journey after Tokyo — which required years of daily work and mental rebuilding — was far from instant. She said the pressure and memories of past struggles don’t simply disappear, even after returning to the top.

She returned for the 2024 Paris Olympics, where she won three gold medals and one silver.

“It was a process of a couple of years,” she said. “I think people have a misconception that I just woke up one day and everything was all fine and done. But it was a combination of going every day, grinding in and out of the gym.”