And I will still die/ of joy and fear/ when the curtain rises:/ fear that I may/ no longer remember/ the part I already know/ Then, when it’s my turn/, punctually, I’m there/ in the dream, always the same.
Preceded by the winged fame of the forbidden backward somersault and rehabilitated by the regulations after 50 years, Ilia Malinin he also wanted to be the first to perform the legendary quadruple Axel at the Olympic Games. But no, the predestined falls into the dark abyss of anxiety as in a whirlpool, sucked in by I trace them on the ice of the Ice Skating Arena in Assago
The mental switch that makes you remember the part when the curtain rises misfires on the most beautiful thing in the blonde angel’s head and abandons him to fear: the quadruple Axel comes out as soon as it’s simple and it’s immediately night. The man who was supposed to be Aznavour’s comedian turns out to be Mordillo’s little man – the Argentine comedian who, like few others, portrayed the psychology of sport – with his big nose looking out over the edge of the precipice of the football field at the top of the cliffscrutinizing the lost balls.
Too many expectations around the 21-year-old American of Kazakh origin, too much fame around the backward jump prohibited until 2024 for its risks and for the aesthetics which are not very popular with purists who prefer the elegance of the gesture to the circus gamble, a gesture considered for a long time to be an exhibition item, which Brian Boitano could and did only indulge in at galas.
Being the son of art of the Kazakh couple who won Olympic gold in Nagano 1998 immediately after moving to the United States where Ilia was born, predestined to give the United States Plushenko’s heir by the Russian legend’s own admission, who won in Turin 2006 by making the Orthodox sign of the cross on the spot on the ice where he saved himself from falling.
However, Ilia is not saved, the ice does not forgive him, the public goes crazy around the spectacular nature of his gestures, the media dazzled prematurely by his golden legend, the bettors already certain of the gold in their pockets.
Too much pressure makes what’s under those blonde curls explode: if you skate with your body, it’s with your head that you win. Those who skated before him have demonstrated it, the tension of the most awaited big man has already shattered the certainties of his best opponents, all of whom fell in front of him. Instead of the triumphal march, a closed-mouthed chorus would be enough, there would be no need to overdo it, a clean sequence would be worth its weight in gold and instead it is the debacle: the four turns of the Axel stop at one, the mind is unable to reset the error: Ilia falls once, falls twice, sucked into a hole of terror in the ice while his angelic physiognomy collapses into a hint of tears. No gold, no silver, no bronze, no podium, nothing at all: eighth behind the Kazakh Mikhail Shaidorov (when it comes to retaliation) and the Japanese Yuma Kagiyama (who has Carolina Kostner in his coaching team) and Shun Sato. God don’t bless America this time.
It is the law of sport and the beauty of never knowing how it will end: everything happens here and now just once without appeal, without replies, you have to be there, in front of billions of glances, every time all over again. You don’t have yesterday, you don’t have tomorrow, everything in your hands, every time, but more so in your head.
He explained it well Federica Brignone after his gold medal in Super-G: «The fact that after the injury it was already a success to be there took away the most difficult thing about the Olympics: the pressure. I skied lightly, whereas when you want something too much it’s often the time you can’t get it.”
With his opponents already on the ground, someone behind the scenes could have advised Ilia to skate cleanly, perhaps giving up the risk of the quadruple Axel for the comfort zone of a safer triple. It would have been enough to win. But not to win overwhelmingly. And perhaps this was precisely the point: the designated hero, prisoner of his legend, could no longer afford to go back on the promise of his uniqueness.
And in this castle of rude destinies, the intoxication that prevented Daniel Grassl fourth after the short from actually playing at home, as a potential outsider uncomfortable among the falls of the gods, sounds even more mocking.
