Donovan Carrillo: The whirlwind continues. Diving with Rommel Pacheco? Why not

Seeing is believing.

Believing that a quadruple jump is possible. That qualifying to the Olympics and then the free skate are within reach. That personal best marks can be achieved on the biggest stage in sports.

There was only one problem for the history-making Mexican figure skater Donovan Carrillo: he had never seen it.

Prior to these Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022, his nation has only ever qualified four skaters to the Olympics, most recently to the 1992 Games in Albertville, France where both Riccardo Olavarrieta and Mayda Navarro failed to advance to the free skate.

So instead of tapping into a rich, local history in his sport, he turned elsewhere.

“Before figure skating, I was in gymnastics and diving, and I had the opportunity to meet a lot of Olympic athletes and train with them when I was a kid like [Olympic divers] Ivan Garcia, Germán Sanchez and Jahir Ocampo,” Carrillo told Olympics.com. “They were always super nice with me and they taught me a lot.”

He used what he saw in diving to push his skating forward.

“I took a lot of inspiration from them because as a Mexican, I’d never seen a quad in figure skating before. But I had seen a quad rotation, quad rotation and a half in diving, so, I just thought about it and said, ‘If they can do it in diving, I think I can do it on figure skating,’” Carrillo explained. “So, they were such an inspiration for me.”

The sport has also been part of his post-Beijing performance whirlwind. After the 22-year-old set a personal best in the short program and became the first Mexican skater to advance to an Olympic free skate, one of the many to congratulate him was diver Olympic Rommel Pacheco.

“Much success in the final, my friend Donovan,” Pacheco wrote on Instagram.