The Olympic Curse for World Champions

You may have noticed in many sports that a lot of the world’s top athletes win World Championships, but not the Olympics. As a figure skater myself, this is a pattern that is very commonly seen and it is heartbreaking to see athletes who break endless records not win one of the biggest competitions of their lives. So why is that and what makes the Olympics so significant?

To me, the first very obvious reason that I think of in terms of the difference between the Olympics and the World Championships is that the World Championships have a greater emphasis on the athlete themselves and the Olympics have a greater emphasis on the country. The Olympics is held to celebrate world peace and to maintain it, so its significance lies far beyond elite athletes—it is an event that celebrates the unity of elite athletes around the world. This puts more pressure on athletes as they perform as not only is this the peak of their careers, it is also their countries.

Secondly, the Olympics is held every four years, a lot less often than the Worlds. In a sport like figure skating where athletes retire as young as teenage, making it to one Olympic game is already a challenge, let alone two or more or winning. Take Anna Shcherbakova, she was 17 when she participated in her first and last Olympics, which she won. She was the world champion the year before and that was the only Olympic game she was ever in. Another athlete we can look at is Kaori Sakamoto, who participated in 3 Olympic games and received four medals. One athlete retired at 17, and the other retired at 26. This shows how much the Olympics mean to athletes: it is a milestone that measures the growth and changes of each athlete, from both their skills and experience, and that is something only Olympians know the weight of.

Third, making it to the Olympics is hard. Just like any other international competition hosted by the ISU, every country only has 3 spots for athletes in each category, but this doesn’t mean the athletes who have been representing the country for the entire season will be competing at the Olympics—usually, the national championships decide the final 3. Athletes can rank highly at Worlds and have a high global ranking in the sport but if they mess up at Nationals, then their door to the Olympics is closed, just like the tragic story of Alena Kostornaia (hopefully we can see her representing her country at the next Olympics in pairs skating!). We see this happen not only with her, but Ilia Malinin, the Olympic gold medal hopeful this year, said himself that if he was chosen for the 2022 Olympics, he wouldn’t have skated the way he did. Amber Glenn, who was 26 when she competed at the 2026 Olympics, which is her first Olympics of her entire career of 13 years. She only peaked when she was 24, which made her “good enough” to join the Olympic team, even though she had always been a highly talented skater. Olympic seasons are selective, and when it rolls around, not many athletes can control what happens to them even if they perform their best.

This leads us to some conspiracy theories, and that includes the Olympic favorite curse, which is caused partially due to the Olympic pressure. If an athlete has won every major competition prior to the Olympics, fans would obviously have higher expectations for that athlete because they have always achieved the world’s best. The most known examples are Evgenia Medvedeva, Kamila Valieva, and Ilia Malinin. Evgenia was the best skater before the Olympic season, winning every single major competition for two years straight. She just needed that one Olympic gold to achieve the Grand Slam, when she got injured and couldn’t skate to her best. Kamila Valieva was incredibly young when she won every single major competition, when then she got tested positive for doping. Ilia Malinin had a winning streak of 14 competitions over the past 2 years, when he then couldn’t perform his best at the Milan Olympics. All the skaters mentioned above are incredibly talented and skilled. They just needed that one Olympic gold. I guess this might have to do with the Olympic favorite curse, which we don’t know if it is 100% true, but it does show that the higher the expectations and the greater the achievement of the skater before, the higher the expectation from audiences. We have seen many of those stories, but we also need to know that for athlets, it is hard to not listen to what fans and audiences have to say about them before something as big as the Olympics, but of course I get it, I am a figure skating fan myself, and I know who I want to see win the event, so it is also hard for me not to be part of the community that discusses who will win and who might not. Anything can happen, and that goes to both the fans and the skaters.

I think the Olympics is not only a milestone in the athletes’ professional careers, it is also important to them business-wise and development wise. Business deals and fame rises substantially post-Olympics for skaters who stand on the top of the podium, and this is a testimony of sport becoming a catalyst for an athlete’s career onwards. Yuzuru Hanyu’s two Olympic gold medals mark the turning point in his career where he turns his career into a cultural phenomenon for so many Japanese skaters to come. Yuna Kim with her Olympic medal also became the role model for skaters in South Korea. Alysa Liu with her 2026 Olympic gold obtained countless brand deals, got herself to numerous events, and rose herself to fame. The Olympics is when the rest of the general public gets to see and know the sport, and that when skaters get the most attention.

So enough about the significance of the Olympics and winning it, what happens if one of the best skaters don’t win it? Does that make them a lesser skater? Short answer: no. It is like using the World Cup to measure the success of a soccer player’s career. It is only one competition and can’t encapsulate the entirety of an athlete’s capabilities and success. I am not saying that it is not significant—it is, but it cannot define an athlete. Look at Michelle Kwan, Alexandra Trusova, Evgenia Medvedeva, Ilia Malinin, Mao Asada, and so many more. They are legends but with no Olympic gold, yet. Some athletes arrive at the Olympics as the obvious winner, some after years of being overlooked, and some in the need of disappointment in missing one Olympic for the next. No matter what it is that got the skater there, getting there is already an achievement.