Only prime numbers understand the loneliness of prime numbers. This is behind the liaison that was created between the American artistic gymnastics star Simone Biles, who arrived at Tokyo 2020 crushed by the pressureand wisely withdrew from most of the competitions for fear of taking risks, given that due to stress, she had lost the sense of orientation of her body in flight, which is dangerous in an essentially acrobatic discipline. An act of courage to retire, to then return to Paris 2024 in good shape, so i Time named her athlete of the year
Gymnastics and figure skating are in some ways twin disciplines: they are automatic sports and require the learning of a routine which, in the best of all possible worlds, should be carried into the race memorized in the mind and body with such confidence that it can be performed automatically without thinking. Something that Barbara Fusar Poli, world gold in ice dancing in 2001 and Olympic bronze in 2002, coach of the Guignard-Fabbri duo, fourth in Milan Cortina 2026, explained to us just before the Games, never happens in reality: “We aspire to it, but we are not machines, there is always some stumble in the machinery but expert skaters also know how to hide it.” In fact, it was surprising and created a minimum of shiver that Malinin attempted, however, already with his concentration gone due to too many errors, the leap backwards prohibited until 2024, if it had gone badly he would have taken risks.
The real problem, as we saw in Malinin’s performance, is when the automatism fails completely. If it happens to number one, at that moment he is alone, because only those who have been there can understand. It is the reason why a contact was established between Simone Biles, who was in the stands in Milan on the evening of the men’s singles and the American skater who collapsed at the best moment: because as Biles herself explained, who seemed to have read Ilia’s thoughts, in the message she sent him there was not only generic support but the tip to get out of it in the future, a long job, which probably no one else could credibly give him.
It’s the dynamic whereby when a great champion of an individual sport loses a coach, he struggles to find another: he needs someone who has already managed that thing at that level, and it’s not easy when you’re number one. When at the World Championships in Rome Federica Pellegrini needed to be “relieved” from the pressure of the world championship at home, after the Olympic gold in Beijing, Alberto Castagnetti, the teacher who had helped her in the delicate phase of the early explosion after Athens 2004, spoke to the press instead of her: «Federica isn’t too well, I left her to rest, but don’t worry: everything is under control». The next day Federica Pellegrini won gold. Castagnetti could also say that “Everything under control” to Federica and Federica trusted him, when, shortly after, Alberto Castagnetti died suddenly, for Federica came moments of fatigue and complicated search for someone else to trust again like this. It’s the same reason for which Darren Cahill is so important for Jannik Sinner: someone who has already gone where almost no one arrives is the key to everything. Identical concept expressed by Anna Danesi, captain of the national team, the following day the victory of the Olympic gold in Paris: «It’s different if someone who has already played one tells you that the Olympic final is a game to be played like the others, because you believe him».
It is a very small group of people who can share the experience at that level, the others have no advice to give, as in all extreme experiences, they can only humanly be there, and that is no small thing, even if the loneliness of the prime numbers remains.
