2026 Winter Olympics: Ilia Malinin meets Simone Biles after figure skating heartbreak

Gymnastics great Biles, who has won 11 Olympic medals including seven golds, was in the stands for the free skate and contacted Malinin afterwards having suffered her own collapse on the Olympic stage.

She arrived as favourite at the Tokyo Games in 2021, having won four gold medals at Rio 2016.

But she suffered the ‘twisties’ – a mental block triggered by stress or anxiety – and withdrew from events to prioritise her mental health.

She returned to win three golds and one silver medal at Paris 2024.

The 28-year-old told Olympics.com, external: “I was really worried about how his mental health was going to be.

“When you’re expected to skate a performance of your lifetime and you don’t deliver, I worry how that affects his mental health and how the world is going to view that. I’ve been through that first hand and so I really went into protection mode.”

Biles said they had met up in Milan on Tuesday after she had decided following the final that she needed to get in touch.

“It was really heartbreaking,” she said. “I did a couple of bullet points and just sent it to him right away so he knew that he had support in a different aspect.

“Seeing someone and talking to someone that has gone through the same thing and validating that… He’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, yes, this is exactly how I feel. This is how to get over it or process it’.

“And so I think that was really, hopefully, helpful to him.”