Last night, Ilia Malinin stepped onto the ice as the heavy favorite. The most technically gifted skater in the field. The “Quad God.” The expectations were enormous.

And then the moment didn’t go his way. It always amazes me how surprised we seem to be when someone falters under enormous pressure — as if being human were unexpected.

When pressure rises, the nervous system responds. What once kept us alive shows up as urgency — tightening muscles, narrowing vision, speeding thought. The margin between fluidity and force gets smaller. The mind wants to control what normally unfolds.

In a recent reflection I called Wondering Where the Lions Are? I wrote about how most of the time there is no lion — just a system trying to protect us. But when the stakes rise and the story grows loud, the lion can feel very real.

This isn’t weakness. It’s human.

What struck many observers was how differently the night unfolded for his teammate, Maxim Naumov. He stumbled early but recovered with remarkable composure. The same ice, the same lights — but different histories. Different expectations. Different internal stakes. One skater carried the enormous weight of gold-medal expectation. The other turned transformed profound grief into something beautiful. The nervous system responds not just to the present moment but to what that moment represents.

Moments feel “big” because of meaning. Identity. Memory. Loss. Hope. The body does not cleanly separate those threads. It reacts to the story as much as to the circumstance.

For any athlete — especially a young one — nights like this can linger. But they can also teach. Not about talent, but about how to meet pressure. How to notice when urgency masquerades as truth. How to widen the view instead of shrinking into protection.

Compassion matters here. For the athlete who faltered. For the one who recovered. For all of us who have stepped into a moment that felt larger than we were ready for.

It’s easy to celebrate perfection. It’s harder — and more important — to make room for imperfection.

Sport, at its best, reminds us that being human means being unfinished. Fallible. Learning in public. Sometimes brilliant. Sometimes not.

And that’s okay.

In fact, it may be the point.

— Pete

Author’s note: This reflection draws on themes explored more fully in my book, The Why of Sports, where presence — not pressure — is the doorway to performance, growth, and connection.

Thanks for Reading.