Ilia And Me: Failure Judged On The Ice And In The Office

This was more than just “choking” in competition; it was a complete meltdown and an inability to even get started. I can relate.

Claudine Wolk | March 26, 2026

Ilia Malinin was expected to win the men’s singles, figure skating gold medal at the Olympics this year. It was a “sure thing.” Ilia does things on the ice in competition that no other man can do. Not only can he complete up to seven quad jumps during a performance, he is the only man to perform the elusive quad axel. In skating competition, he is accustomed to winning. According to Wikipedia, Ilia is a two-time World Champion (2024, 2025), a three-time Grand Prix Final Champion (’23, ’24, ’25) and a four-time U.S. National Champion (2023–26). In fact, just five days before the single men’s final, Ilia led the USA skating figure team to a gold medal. With one gold medal secured in the team competition, it was time for him to secure the holy grail, the coveted men’s single gold medal.  But something went horribly wrong.

What happened on the ice on that Friday night of the men’s singles competition was unthinkable. Ilia came out on the ice as the final skater of the night. Not only was unable to land his jumps, he couldn’t perform them at all. A few times during the performance, he flew into the air only to come right back down. The performance was unbelievable, unimaginable.

Why couldn’t Ilia perform?

It was as if he couldn’t even get started, as if he couldn’t make his body move on command. Almost a week later in a TV interview with Mike Tirico, Ilia would describe the failure as his mind being ahead of his body and he simply couldn’t catch up.  Said Malinin, “[I]t felt like it was speeding ahead of me and I didn’t have time to really like catch up and get back together.”

This was more than just “choking” in competition.  This was a complete meltdown and an inability to even get started.

I can equate with what happened to Ilia because a similar phenomenon happened to me at the same tender age of 21.

In 1988, I was a rising senior in college. That summer my mom was a P&G (Procter and Gamble) telecom manager and hooked me up with a coveted accounting intern position for the summer. I worked assisting the general accounting department in a P&G auxiliary office in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. Procter & Gamble had a program where accounting interns could be hired as permanent employees after graduation. I felt P&G would be the perfect place to start my career.

There was one obstacle, however. Every intern needed to take a “personality test,” the kind of test that would determine whether you had the “right stuff” to become a P&G accounting leader. The test would be given at the end of the internship.

Every day that summer, every manager and every other intern beat the drum of the importance of performing well on the P&G personality test.

You must pass the P&G personality test.

The P&G personality test will determine your future.

The P&G personality test is your entrance to future accounting greatness.

Without doing well on the P&G personality test, your career will be over.

Drum beat, drum beat, drum beat.

I heard this and all its variations every day for three months.

Some people have issues with tests, but not me. I was great at taking tests. I had the highest-grade point average in my grade school class of a hundred kids. I ranked sixth in my class of four hundred in high school. I did well on my SATs and managed to secure a partial scholarship to my chosen university. At that point in college, I was a straight A student.

This upcoming test was going to secure a place for me not just at P&G, but in my future accounting/finance career. That’s what everyone told me, ad nauseum. On test day, I was a wreck. To pile on to my stress, one of the managers called me into his office to share once again how they were all “counting on me.” Finally, it was time. They led me to the door of a stuffy, windowless, 5 x 5 office with a desk and chair. On that desk was placed a paper test and a pencil.  The proctor announced that the test was being timed as she left the room and closed the door.

What happened to me in that room had never happened to me before and has not happened to me since.

I simply and horrifically could not put pencil to paper. My hand with the pencil in it refused to operate. I must have sat there for at least twenty minutes of the two-hour test, simply staring at the paper. My eyes could not focus. My hand would not move. Finally, I scratched out something or other and answered a few questions. I honestly don’t remember.

As you can imagine, I was not offered a job at P&G. My pitiful scores demonstrated that I was clearly not accounting management material.

Back to Ilia. So, here’s this 21-year-old kid who has competed successfully in skating competitions for years. He’s secured a gold medal for his team just five days before but on the day of the single men’s long form competition he, too, cannot get started. He simply can’t perform.

I believe the constant, relentless drum beat of an overwhelming media, social media, coaches, family, and fans over the whole of his career and especially that week caused Ilia to freeze as I had. Heck, even Scott Hamilton, a 1984 Olympic gold medalist, now a sports announcer, commented on Ilia’s chances at gold saying, “The only one who can beat Ilia is Ilia himself.” Come Scott, not cool. The guy does not have enough pressure heaped on his shoulders to be the best men’s skater in the entire world through this one performance and you pile it on? No wonder Ilia could not put blade to ice.

I can’t remember everything about how I handled the time immediately following my disappointing P&G personality test performance but I remember feeling like a failure. I was humiliated. My bosses were disappointed. They had touted me to “corporate” as one of their home-grown, new, up and coming accountants and now had proverbial egg on their faces.

There was no job offer but the “personality test” did serve a purpose. It sparked a fire. It would have been easy for me to accept a position at P&G that summer and sail through senior year with my future planned. Instead, I was on a mission and I was angry. Why should a single test determine my fate or encapsulate my potential? On return to college, I tacked on more classes, graduated with a finance AND accounting major, participated in the campus interview process, and landed a position with a big eight accounting firm. I went on to pass the CPA with flying colors and focused my career on small business accounting, a focus that would enable me to continue working for 25 years while we raised a family. Take that P&G!

After his heartbreaking skate, Ilia had to endure the humiliation of yet another media post-mortem, aka interview, immediately after receiving his dream crushing scores. He handled himself brilliantly and humbly, a master class in professionalism.  Perhaps that first post-interview was the spark of what will become a whole new rewarding phase of Ilia’s fascinating career. There’s more ahead for this young man, perhaps something he might never have envisioned. I have no doubt Ilia will continue to excel in future competitions to include the 2030 Olympics. He will most likely earn the single men’s gold medal but even if he doesn’t, something tells me he’ll be just fine, maybe even better.

Claudine Wolk is a two-time published author, a freelance writer and a podcast host.  You can find her articles in Writer’s Digest Magazine, Hybrid Mom Magazine, The Federalist, Independent Publisher Online and WOW: Women on Writing Online as well as at her substack at ClaudineWolk.substack.com.

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