Rockstar athletes like Ilia Malinin often get 'the yips' at the Olympics. It can make them stronger

Ilia Malinin's painful falls at the Milan Cortina Games follow in a long tradition of great U.S. athletes who get the "yips" or the "twisties" during the Olympics. Rockstar athletes like Ilia Malinin often get 'the yips' at the Olympics. It can make them stronger February 15, 20269:27 AM ET Brian Mann Ilia Malinin of the United States falls during the men's free skate program in figure skating at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. Francisco Seco/AP hide caption toggle caption Francisco Seco/AP CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy — When Ilia Malinin fell repeatedly Friday night on the world's biggest figure skating stage at the Milan Cortina Games, the 21-year-old known as the Quad God was starting a painful journey that many great Olympic athletes have been forced to endure. "It actually bears a lot of similarities to grief," said Dr. Sahen Gupta, a sports performance psychologist and researcher at the University of Portsmouth, who works with elite athletes including Olympians. "Malinin did amazingly in terms of how he handled everything after [his eighth-place performance]," Gupta said. "But in his post-match interview he talked about being in shock and that's one of the first responses we get when we are in grief. It's like, Oh my God, what happened here?" Sponsor Message A pantheon of rockstar-level U.S. Olympians — gymnast Simone Biles, figure skater Nathan Chen, alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin — have experienced these cruel moments. After years of training and performing with consistent brilliance in high-level competitions, they reach the Olympic stage and everything goes wrong. 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics Ilia Malinin, U.S. figure skater favored for gold, finishes 8th There are names for these stumbles in the sports world: "You know, yips or twisties, these are actually very highly studied. The technical term for that is performance failure, or performance blocks," Gupta said Why do the yips and twisties seem to happen more often on the Olympic stage? Experts say part of the challenge is simply the fierce public attention and media scrutiny. "If you are a medal contender that gets profiled, that gets shared [on social media], that really draws a spotlight," said Tracey Devonport, a sports psychologist at Hartpury University. The greats who've fallen before United States' Nathan Chen stumbles during his performance in the men's single short program team event at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Gangneung, South Korea, Friday, Feb. 9, 2018. David J. Phillip/AP hide caption toggle caption David J. Phillip/AP The similarity of athletes' stumbles at the Olympics can be uncanny. Leading into the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea, Chen — like Malinin — was widely profiled. He was described as the Ice Prince by Time Magazine and featured in an NBC Super Bowl commercial. Then Chen skated out for his short program and it was a disaster. He fell and stumbled through the routine. Sponsor Message "I did all the right things going into it, it should have been different," he lamented at the time, acknowledging that the pressure of the Games weighed heavily. 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics After the Fall: How Olympic figure skaters soar after stumbling on the ice Speaking after Malinin's faltering performance with Yahoo News, Chen voiced compassion and said he knows first-hand that once a routine begins to unravel before an Olympic-size audience, it's difficult to recover. "I remember when I went in my first jump and I fell, the crowd goes Ooh! That just hurts you to your gut," he said. Four years of work, one chance to get it right Simone Biles, of the United States, performs on the vault during the artistic gymnastics women's final at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Tuesday, July 27, 2021, in Tokyo. Natacha Pisarenko/AP hide caption toggle caption Natacha Pisarenko/AP Sports psychologists told NPR it's not only the glare of media attention and massive global audiences that can throw athletes off balance at the Olympics. Another factor is the narrow window for success. Athletes get one chance to peak. Failure can have massive consequences. "This is what we characterize as an acute and immediate stress environment," said Gupta. "In most [Olympic] sports, it about a ten-minute period every four years. That's when you're actually competing in the finals for the medals." A growing number of athletes competing at the Olympic level do their best to prepare mentally for these make-or-break moments of competition. They work with therapists and focus on meditation and mindfulness, as well as conditioning and technique. "It's a bit like an accelerator on a car, you've got to get it just right," said Devonport. "You don't want to be too relaxed, but you don't want to be too nervous. And everybody's different, that's the beauty of it. Everybody operates best at a different [emotional] level." Even with the best preparation, there's a sure-fire formula to avoid the yips and twisties. Biles, widely considered the greatest gymnast of all time, withdrew from competition at the 2021 Summer Games in Tokyo after struggling with the twisties. Sponsor Message A year later, during a season in wh