Ilia Malinin Reflects on Olympic Pressure and Team USA Gold

It's a lot to handle, and, you know, the pressure of the Olympics is...

it—it's really something different, and I think that not a lot of people will understand that.

They'll only understand that from, you know, the inside. And...

you know, going into this competition, especially today, I felt really confident,

really good, you know. The earlier practice today went really well.

I felt like I was ready and all I needed to do was come out here and just trust everything that happened, but...

it really just went by so fast. I did not have time to process.

I have to process what, you know, really went down.

I really feel for you mentally, uh, out there. We were watching you.

It seemed like you, you know, really trying to push through.

Yeah, mentally it was... it was a weird feeling just going into the program.

I just had so many thoughts and memories flood right before I got into my starting pose and...

almost, I think it maybe overwhelmed me a little bit, you know.

I've been through a lot in my life, a lot of, you know, bad and good experiences, so...

just, you know, I feel like just the pressure of especially being that, you know, Olympic gold medal hopeful or...

just... just something I can't control now.

Yeah, last question for you, Ilia. You know, back home in Reston, they had a big skate watch party for you.

They're proud of the gold medal you did help Team USA win here today.

Now how do you feel about that? You—you're not walking... going back home to Virginia empty-handed.

Yeah, I think that's definitely a positive for me and...

it honestly maybe gives me just a bit thoughts that I need to...

just understand of why that happened in the individual event.

I think that going into this competition, I made sure that I was...

able to, you know, prepare myself for at least four programs or four performances.

So, honestly, it's...

I haven't had time to understand what fully went on, so...

it's... I'm still kind of trying to understand what happened.

Thanks, Ilia. Thank you.