Ilia Malinin's Olympic free skate Friday night in Milan was 59 seconds old when he glided through the center of the ice surface, dropped his left shoulder and initiated the second jump of his program—a quadruple axel that he alone executes in competition. To that point, Malinin's work had unfolded in an atmosphere of inevitability, as if the world was watching not just a competition, but a coronation. Deservedly so, to a point. The 21-year-old Malinin had not just dominated his sport—11 straight international victories over three seasons, including two world championships—but evolved it. He seemed unbeatable.

We never learn. In our rush to anoint, we forget the immutable truth that governs all sports: The scoreboard always has the final say, narratives be damned. Greatness be damned. Before Malinin's four minute program was finished, he would struggle with another jump and fall to the ice on two others. When it was over, he grimaced as if wounded and then covered his face as if embarrassed. It was difficult to watch. From NBC's booth, Terry Gannon said, "A reminder that nothing is certain in sports," sage words from a man whose much younger self was on the court when his North Carolina State team stunned unbeatable Houston to win the 1983 NCAA Championship, a victory that endures across times as one of the most startling in any sport.

Malinin's struggle came three days after U.S. alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin, the winningest racer in history and a three-time Olympic medalist, skied a shockingly slow slalom run in the second half of the team combined event, 15th among 18 racers who finished. It was also difficult to watch; Shiffrin is inarguably the best women's slalom skier in history and this year, with seven victories and a narrow second in eight World Cup races. Her best runs are equal parts athleticism and art. Her partner, downhill gold medalist Breezy Johnson, had been fastest among in the combined downhill, but Shiffrin's run dropped them to fourth, out of the medals. (And kept the U.S. team of Jackie Wiles and Paula Moltzan in third, a bronze medal).

Afterward, Wiles said that as she and Moltzan waited, "We were hoping for a miracle."

Likewise, Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan, who won the gold medal that had been metaphorically engraved for Malinin, said, "It was very surprising. He's the best skater in history."

A term has bubbled to the surface of the content world in recent years: Olympic Pressure. It is meant to distinguish the pressure that all athletes feel in competition from the singular pressure of winning at the Olympics, and specifically the pressure to win when victory is not just expected but preordained. It's not a new concept: The Olympics have always thrown a heavy blanket across the shoulders of its stars. Austrian downhiller Franz Klammer (1976) and Australian 400-meter runner Cathy Freeman (2000) skied and ran to gold medals that two entire nations desperately expected. Michael Phelps was expected to win nearly every race he swam.

But something has intensified in the broader Olympic ecosystem. The soft target here is social media, a world where athletes have access to the full range of human responses to their work, some of it cruel beyond humanity. Traditional media does not escape blame; we have always built Olympic humans in to superheroes before they've won a cape. Simone Biles tapped into it five years ago in Tokyo, when she withdrew from all but one Olympic gymnastics event, citing not just the physical issues, but mental ones as well. I wrote about it a year later during the last Winter Games in Beijing, when Shiffrin was struggling (keep reading) and failed to medal, or even to finish any of her three events in slalom and giant slalom and after each one cut open a vein and bled her emotions in post-race media gaggles. "I'm questioning a lot of things right now," Shiffrin said. It was an astonishing admission from such a brilliant athlete. 

She also said this:  "I feel like some people were expecting that I might win. And you, the people closest to me. It's a letdown for them." As I wrote four years ago, coming out of that quote: For them. 

Olympic athletes compete not just for themselves, but for everyone near them, and also for everyone on their screens. Most of them are professionals in their sports, active but invisible in the four years between Olympics. Those Games arrive with a desperate force, as sponsors and media all seek a return on their investment. And to be sure, the athletes are complicit as well, building their brands in advance, which does not for most make the task of winning or medaling easier; it makes it harder.

But one size does not fit all. A little more than 24 hours after Malinin's disappointment, speed skater Jordan Stolz, who arrived in Italy with similar expectations, won his second gold medal, this one under the withering pressure of the 500 meters, which takes barely half a minute and is decided by tiny margins. He defeated Dutch rival Jenning De Boo, and won by .11 seconds with a stunning close over the final 30 meters. Three days earlier Stolz had won a gold medal in the 1,000 meters, the event in which he is most dominant, also in an Olympic record, also over de Boo, who had raced out to an early lead before Stolz skated him down on the final lap. 

After that race, Stolz told NBC's Lewis Johnson, "I thought I was feeling good in the beginning, and then Jenning just came by me and I thought wow, maybe he's good enough to win the gold and then I'll be getting second. And then in that second-to-last turn, I was like, no, I can't let this happen. So I threw two arms down, and I just went as hard as I possibly could, and I made it."

After getting his second gold in the 500, Stolz described his finishing close like so: "When I came out of the exit, we were right next to each other. Even if he was a little bit ahead, I thought I would still be able to win, just because my last 100 is really good." Simple. See the ball, hit the ball. 

Stolz was asked about pressure. His response: "I definitely felt it before the 1,000. Sometimes you just have to deal with [pressure] and get it out of your mind if it's going to affect your racing. You only have one chance to win. You have to just put it out of your mind." (To be clear Stolz understands the power of the Olympics. During an interview last fall for a feature story, he said, "The Olympics are everything, right?")

Then consider Malinin, who like Shiffrin four years ago in Beijing, was extraordinarily tough on himself after his free skate. "The nerves were overwhelming," he said. And: "I just thought all I needed to do was go out there and trust the process that I've always been doing with every competition. But of course it's not like any other competition. It's the Olympics, and I think people only realize the pressure and the nerves that actually happened from the inside. It was really just something that overwhelmed me and I just felt like I had no control."

Minutes earlier Malinin had smiled painfully as he said to NBC's Andrea Joyce, "I blew it."

This is all very painful. The Stolz narrative is the one we seek, and the one that makes us comfortable as viewers, as chroniclers. Historically a great athlete faces down pressure, brushes it aside, and wins gold. Cut. Fade to black. But these athletes are not all alike, and Stolz's success should not be the basis for framing Malinin's failure. It doesn't mean that either 21-year-old's life should be judged by this outcome. They both likely have more Olympics ahead, even if this  is not promised. One moment should not define them. Or anyone.

Another angle: Four years ago, Stolz was in Beijing as a future star. He did not medal, but he experienced. "Being in the previous Olympic Games helped," he said after Saturday's 500 meters. "Being on a stage where you only compete once every four years and there's a lot of hype around it, that can add pressure."

Malinin finished second in the Olympic Trials four years ago at age 17. But he was not selected for the team that went to Beijing, because of his mediocre international results. It stuck with him. He was heard on an NBC microphone immediately after his skate, saying, "Beijing, I would not have skated like that." He explained later: "I think if I went in '22, then I would have had more experience and known how to handle this Olympic environment." 

But again, athletes are unalike. Shiffrin was 18 years old, and among the favorites, when she won the gold medal in slalom at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia. She recovered almost impossibly from a late-race error in that one and talked about winning five medals at a future Games. She seemed bulletproof. Four years later, as an established star, she won gold in giant slalom and silver in the single-skier combined downhill-slalom event, but a disappointing fourth in the slalom. In 2020, she lost her father to an accident at their home in Colorado, a seminal moment in her life. Then came Beijing. Her Olympic arc has been the opposite of what both Stolz and Malinin described.

Shiffrin's combined slalom was different from Beijing in that she stayed vertical, but shocking for its passiveness. She posted at length on Instagram Friday, in essence laying out her understanding of the Olympic Games. She praised Johnson, Wiles and Moltzan, tagged super-G winner Frederica Brignone of Italy and Jessie Diggins and Chloe Kim of the USA. Then: "The Olympics ask us to take a real risk on the world stage. One that requires courage and vulnerability to erroneous judgments and narratives built on a limited understanding of what this sport truly demands."

And: "I'm grateful to be here, motivated and excited for what's next, and proud to be part of this American team. May we all champion one another, tread lightly on what we don't fully comprehend, and have the fortitude to keep showing up."

This can be read as many ways as there are readers. Shiffrin is an unfailingly kind and generous person, full stop. She is choosing to be the narrator of her own Olympic story, to which she is entitled. She is asking for kindness in a mean world, which is honorable. She is asking for grace, which that same world could use more of. She might also be asking that outcomes be treated as incidental to experience. That is a tougher sell. Outcomes made her famous, as they did Malinin and Stolz. But also one she is also entitled to beseech.

Shiffrin races Sunday morning in the giant slalom, in which she will be a medal contender, not a favorite. She will remain an overwhelming favorite in next Wednesday's slalom. She will stand at the top of a hill for both races, empowered by her belief that her being is more than her placing in race. And like for Malinin and Stolz, it surely is. But there will be a clock at the bottom, judging just the same.