For Donovan Carrillo, stepping away from the ice after the 2026 Olympic Winter Games and World Championships gave him something he rarely has during a competitive season: time to stop and think.

After four years of work that culminated in his second Olympic appearance, the Mexican skater returned home, spent time with his family, performed in a show, gave seminars and allowed himself to recover. Yet the time away did not convince him that it was time to walk away from competitive skating. Instead, it helped him understand why he wants to keep going.

“The hardest part was to push after the Olympics for Worlds,” Carrillo explained. “In a way, you worked so hard for four years to make it to the Olympics that your body just wants to rest and recover after all the tension and all the sacrifice for that.”

Once Worlds was over, however, something unexpected happened.

“I was just excited to come back to Toronto and keep training,” he said. “It was crazy because I started to miss my routine, miss school, and miss my coaches.”

The time away also gave him the opportunity to consider his future without the demands of daily training dictating his thoughts.

“Sometimes in the routine, you don’t have the time to just process things and know if you really want to keep pushing, keep going,” Carrillo said. “Because I had the time off, I feel like I really was able to really think on my future and to think on what’s next for me.”

The time away didn’t make him want to leave skating. It made him want to come back.

“I Know I Can Do More”

“I was just like, okay, I’m pretty young. I feel young. I’m 26, but I still feel like 18,” he said. “My body is responding pretty well. I feel healthy. I skate happy.”

He likes the life he has built around skating and feels supported by the government and sponsors in Mexico.

“I like my lifestyle of eating well, sleeping well, training,” Carrillo said. “And I don’t see any reasons for me to not keep going.”

Two Olympic appearances would be a remarkable point at which to leave the sport. Carrillo understands that. But he also believes there is unfinished business.

“In my mind, I was like, it doesn’t make sense to stop,” he said. “Yeah, okay, two Olympics, it’s something good to leave the sport, I know, but I also feel like I can still develop myself.”

For Carrillo, continuing was not enough. He wanted to challenge himself in ways he had not before, particularly by bringing more difficult technical content into competition.

“I know I can do more,” he said. “In training, I’m able to do quads Salchows and toes very consistently. And I just want to have the chance to compete that content a bit more. Cause I know it’s not easy, but I know I can manage.”

For Carrillo, that challenge is as much about becoming more competitive as it is about pushing himself.

“Once I manage and once I dominate the content, I’ll be a lot more competitive with the other boys that are also pushing,” he said.

But Carrillo isn’t interested in playing it safe simply because he has already achieved so much.

“I didn’t want to compete skating with the minimum,” Carrillo said. “I wanted to challenge myself doing something, maybe that it’s a bit too ambitious right now, but I want to know things and what to do to make it happen.”

There is no expectation that everything will happen immediately. Instead, he wants to give himself the time to develop the content, learn from the process and discover his limits.

“So I’m just taking the time to develop this content and to see how far I can go with it,” he said.

More Difficulty, Without Losing the Artistry

The technical challenge comes with an equally important condition: Carrillo does not want to become a different kind of skater in the process.

His identity has always been closely connected to performance. Even as he has added increasingly difficult jumps, he has remained determined to preserve the artistry and charisma that made him stand out in the first place.

His progression has been gradual. When he moved from the junior ranks into senior competition, Carrillo was skating with triple-triple combinations and did not yet have a triple Axel. He nevertheless made the 2018 World Championships, where he found himself competing alongside skaters he had grown up watching on YouTube.

That experience made him understand what he needed to do next.

“I knew, like, if I wanted to keep going and keep doing well in the sport, I had to do that triple Axel,” he said.

The triple Axel was followed by his first quad, and eventually a second. Now, he is looking at two quads in the short program—and potentially two in the free skate as the season progresses.

Carrillo knows that skating with only one quad would probably allow him more room to concentrate on artistry, but that is not the challenge he wants.

“I know if I do a short program with only one quad, it’s going to be consistent. It’s going to be very strong, but I want to challenge myself doing two,” he said. “That’s the push.”

“And for the free skate, I also want to compete the two quads,” he added. “Maybe in the second half of the season, I will do a second.”

The challenge is maintaining everything else that makes the program his.

“I don’t want to forget about the artistry because that’s something that I really enjoy,” he said. “But being honest, it’s not easy.”

Adding more technical difficulty means more energy is required, particularly when a second quad and a triple Axel later in the program are involved. Carrillo understands that he could make the jumps easier by eliminating some of the transitions and artistic details.

“But at this stage, that’s not what I want,” he said. “I want to still cover everything.”

That balance is something he is still trying to solve.

“In training, when you don’t have to worry too much about the music, the details, the choreography and the timing of the jumps, it will be easier to do more quads,” he explained. “But I don’t know in competition because I’ve always relied on the artistry.”

He does not pretend to have the answer yet.

“I don’t have the formula yet, but I know with time and work, this could work. This could happen,” Carrillo said.

More Quads, Same Donovan

For all his focus on technical development, Carrillo has no intention of abandoning what has made him one of Mexico’s most recognizable figure skaters.

“I still want to be known as the Donovan who pleases the crowd,” he said.

For Carrillo, entertaining an audience and enjoying his own performance are inseparable.

“If I’m giving the crowd a good moment, I am having a good moment,” he explained. “So for me, it’s linked. It’s really connected with my skating.”

That philosophy remains intact even when a competition does not go according to plan.

“Even when things don’t go in my way, I always try to bring the energy because I know people sometimes travel just to see skating,” he said. “Even when things didn’t work the way as we plan as skaters, I try to not think about it and just try to enjoy the moment the more I can and make the audience feel a great moment.”

Ultimately, he knows that mistakes are part of the sport.

“At the end of the day, it’s just elements. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t,” Carrillo said. “But skating needs to always be fun.”

That attitude represents a significant change from earlier in his career—and Carrillo can trace much of that change to his time training in Canada.

Finding the Joy in Skating

Carrillo credits his years training in Canada with changing not only his skating but also his relationship with the sport. Before moving to Canada, training in Mexico could be challenging because of public sessions and ice conditions, making it difficult to maintain the intensity he wanted.

“It was pretty tough,” he said. “It was hard to be positive every session because of the challenges that I had to face every day.”

His coaching team in Canada changed more than his skating.

“They also not just changed me in the technical skating way, but also in the personal way,” Carrillo said. “They have taught me so much. And they teach me every day something new about myself, about life, about skating.”

Carrillo’s approach toward training has changed, too. Earlier in his career, he believed that training had to be hard and that he had to suffer every day to improve.

“That was my mindset,” he said.

Now, he sees skating differently.

“Now I feel like I’m having so much fun!” Carrillo said. “Of course, there are days, there are tough days where things don’t work, where you feel like, I don’t know, like over the place. But overall, I feel pretty good. I really enjoy my lifestyle.”

The Olympics have reinforced that perspective. Serving as Mexico’s flag bearer and seeing the world’s best winter athletes gathered in one place was a particularly meaningful experience for Carrillo.

“I think the Olympics inspire me for sure,” he said. “It’s something that motivates me.”

But what motivates him now is not simply the prospect of reaching another Olympics. He wants to discover how much further he can develop as a skater.

“I also feel besides that, I want to just see how far I can go, how much I can grow as an athlete,” Carrillo said.

“And yes, it’s just all about the fun now,” he added. “I feel so glad once I achieved going to two Olympics. Right now, it’s all about the fun of skating and the joy of skating.”

A Nightclub on Ice

That desire to challenge himself is also reflected in Carrillo’s programs this season, both of which take him outside his comfort zone.

For the short program, Carrillo wanted to do something he had never done before. Bourne responded by creating a playlist of more than 100 songs, which he listened to while traveling.

“I found a lot of dance music,” he said. “That was great for me because I like the idea of doing something like a nightclub short program.”

Stromae’s “Alors on danse” immediately appealed to him, but Carrillo realized that the song could not sustain the entire program. He wanted something that would allow the performance to build.

Bourne eventually found “Ave Cesaria,” a remix that gave the program the different sound and build Carrillo was looking for.

“I felt that matched the perfect idea of what I wanted to build in the program and what I wanted to project,” he said.

Carrillo wanted the program to begin lyrically and mysteriously before transforming into something much more energetic.

“I wanted to do something lyrical, like something very slow that builds along the program and also a little bit darker in the beginning, like mysterious,” Carrillo explained. “And then by the time I finished the jumps, it’s just like a party.”

Bourne’s vision complemented Carrillo’s. She wanted him to capture the feeling of being in a nightclub, surrounded by lights, music and movement, allowing his body to respond naturally to each beat.

“She was inviting me to feel each song and each beat and just express myself in a very different way,” Carrillo said.

That freedom is exactly what Carrillo feels when he performs the program.

“I feel so free,” he said. “I feel like all the tension or all the nerves disappear. And I’m just having fun.”

Carrillo also saw Bourne as someone who could push him creatively. He had admired her choreography for years, including her work with Ilia Malinin, Junhwan Cha, Sofia Samodelkina, Yuzuru Hanyu, and Nathan Chen.

“I wanted to challenge myself because I knew she could do it,” he said. “I knew she could challenge me with something special, with something different, with new moves.”

“A Pharaoh That Was Sleeping for Thousands of Years”

The free skate takes Carrillo even further from the image audiences have come to know.

Choreographed by Benoît Richaud, the program is set to music from Mozart l’Égyptien 2 by Les 202 Chanteurs et Musiciens, a fusion of classical and Arabic musical influences, along with “Ad Martem” by Havasi.

Richaud’s concept gave Carrillo an opportunity to approach the program almost as an actor, asking him to inhabit a character rather than relying on the charismatic style for which he is best known.

“In this program, I felt like I needed something different,” Carrillo said. “People have recognized my skating for more charismatic, like Latin music. But I feel like I could deliver something more complex.”

Richaud had encouraged him to explore that side of his skating before, but Carrillo initially resisted the idea.

“I was kind of refusing because I don’t know, I was just scared at the beginning,” he admitted.

The beginning of a new Olympic cycle, however, gave him a different perspective.

“This is a time to try,” Carrillo said. “This is a time to go out of my comfort zone. And I love it.”

The program tells the story of a pharaoh who has been asleep for thousands of years before awakening to discover a world that has completely changed in his absence.

“So it’s a pharaoh that was sleeping for thousands of years,” Carrillo explained. “And then he woke up and he wants to fight for his eternity.”

The character is determined to reclaim his immortality while confronting a world he no longer recognizes. That storyline has given Carrillo the freedom to experiment with movement and expression in ways he has never attempted before.

“It has moments, I feel, where I can really try to express this,” he said. “I feel like I’m moving my body in a totally different way that I’ve ever done.”

For Carrillo, the experiment has extended beyond acting and into the way he actually skates.

“My skating is also better because of these new moves,” he said.

“A Piece of Art Moving”

The transformation is not limited to the skating itself. Carrillo is also taking a different approach to the visual side of his programs.

For his costumes, he is working with Montreal-based designer Mathieu Caron, who has extensive experience designing for ice dancers. Caron also created Carrillo’s Olympic free skate costume, and the skater wanted to continue their collaboration.

“I loved it. I love the fitting. I love the detail,” Carrillo said of the Olympic costume.

What particularly appeals to Carrillo is that Caron approaches skating costumes through the lens of fashion rather than simply adding crystals to a traditional design.

“He is not just adding stones to the costumes,” Carrillo explained. “He takes the time to create something special by using, I feel like, fashion into skating.”

That approach can be seen in the fabrics and construction, including painted fabrics and other techniques that give the costumes their distinctive look.

“If you look closely at both of my costumes, both of them have so many details,” he said. “It’s crazy!”

Carrillo was also struck by Caron’s workshop in Montreal.

“It was like a museum, to be honest, with all the ones he has created for so many skaters,” he recalled.

But creativity is only part of what Carrillo values. A skating costume has to work on the ice, allowing an athlete to move freely while still creating the desired visual effect.

Carrillo has worked with designers who wanted to incorporate elements of fashion but used fabrics or construction techniques that were not necessarily practical for skating. With Caron, he feels he has found a better balance.

“He makes it not just comfortable. He makes something very creative, something very cool,” Carrillo said.

And Carrillo clearly enjoys what they have created together.

“I’m just very in love,” he said. “Even when I’m training with the costumes or competing with the costumes, and I have the chance to see how it looks, it just looks like a piece of art moving, you know?”

Kinoshita: Learning Under Pressure

The Kinoshita Group Cup provided Carrillo with an early lesson in the difference between being able to perform an element in training and being able to execute it under competition pressure.

He arrived in Japan excited to compete, having not returned since the 2019 World Championships in Saitama. His confidence in the quad Salchow was particularly high. For two weeks before Kinoshita, he had not missed a quad Salchow-triple toe combination in practice.

“Not one, not a single time,” he emphasized.

That consistency made what happened in the short program even more unexpected. When the Salchow landing became shaky, the combination he had planned was no longer possible. He had to improvise and put the combination on the quad toe instead—a jump combination he had not trained for that situation.

“I noticed myself when the Salchow didn’t work as planned and I couldn’t do the combination and I had to do the combo in the quad toe,” he said. “That was something I didn’t train, to be honest, because that never happened to me in practice.”

Under the pressure of having to make the adjustment, Carrillo said he began adding movements that ultimately worked against him.

“I think I did some extra movements that I didn’t need,” he said. “So the quad toe just went super crazy and I had a scary fall.”

Although the fall looked severe, Carrillo said the physical impact was not as significant as it appeared. What affected him more was what happened mentally afterward.

“I tried to keep going, but it was just—my mind was off,” he said. “I tried to get the more points I could with the spins, with the choreo, with the transitions, but a part of me was already disconnected.”

Another unexpected mistake followed when he popped the Axel, one of his most reliable jumps.

“I didn’t feel myself when the music was playing,” Carrillo said. “Then I popped the Axel, which was also a surprise because it’s one of my most consistent jumps.”

Looking back, Carrillo realized the biggest problem was not the fall itself but losing his connection to the performance.

“More than the fall, I just disconnected myself,” he explained. “I didn’t feel I was in the moment. I didn’t feel the confidence that I needed to perform the triple Axel.”

The disruption also affected his choreography. Carrillo had to skip some of the smaller details of the program in order to get back on time with the music.

Rather than dwell on the disappointing short program, however, he chose to treat it as information he could use.

“I know what to fix now,” he said. “I am already working on it with my coaches and I feel the next competition is going to be a lot better just because of this.”

For Carrillo, the experience itself was an important part of that process.

“I needed to experience what I lived in Kinoshita in order to build something better,” he said.

The free skate was considerably better, although Carrillo still saw room for improvement. He landed the quad Salchow but was unhappy with the quality of the landing.

“I don’t land like that on my daily practice,” he said. “Under pressure and the nerves, I didn’t feel my skating was as smooth as it is in my daily runs.”

Watching the video afterward gave him another perspective. He noticed that even his knees were not moving as smoothly as they normally do.

“That’s something that I need to work to have better quality on my landings,” he said.

Analyzing the performance is not necessarily comfortable for him, but Carrillo understands that it is part of improving.

“I don’t feel comfortable watching,” he admitted. “But if I don’t watch the programs, if I don’t analyze the video, there’s not going to be a way to improve that.”

He stayed on his feet throughout the free skate, although he stepped out of the quad toe and made smaller mistakes on some of the other triples. More importantly, he felt calmer and more connected than he had in the short.

“It was a lot better than the short for sure,” he said. “And I felt calmer than the short.”

The Quad Toe and Skate America

Carrillo’s next major opportunity to test what he has learned will come at Skate America, currently his only Grand Prix assignment.

For now, he plans to keep the two-quad short program, although that decision will depend on how he feels about the quad toe.

“It will depend on how I feel with the quad toe,” he said. “And if I feel ready, I think I will compete the same content that I did in Kinoshita.”

He is not questioning whether he is capable of the element.

“I know I’m capable of it,” Carrillo said. “I need more mileage.”

Nothing had been finalized at the time of the interview, but the goal remained clear. More than a particular placement, Carrillo has identified what would make the season successful for him: figuring out how to make the quad toe happen when the pressure is highest.

“I have a relationship with the toe that when I do it, it’s really good,” he explained. “Like, I feel it’s a really good quality jump. But under pressure, I tend to do something different.”

The problem, therefore, is not simply technical ability. Carrillo needs to learn how to reproduce the jump he performs in training when the circumstances change.

“So if I’m able to know what to do to make it happen under pressure, I’ll be more than happy,” he said. “Because I feel that will be a game changer for my career.”

He returned to the idea again, emphasizing just how important it is to him.

“Know how to make it happen under pressure,” Carrillo said. “I think that will be, for me, the goal, the biggest result of my season.”

Inspired by the Next Generation

Carrillo is also paying close attention to the skaters coming up behind him.

At Kinoshita, he watched younger competitors perform difficult quads with a level of quality that impressed him.

“It’s crazy,” he said. “Doing effortless quads with the best quality you can imagine. It’s just so inspiring.”

He admitted that he sometimes wishes he had been able to enter the senior ranks with that kind of technical content already established.

“I would have loved to be junior, moving up to senior, doing the content they’re doing,” he said.

The amount of difficult content being performed by the next generation is, in his view, remarkable.

“It’s crazy to see how the next generation is moving on,” he said. “The amount of quads, the amount of content they’re managing. It’s super impressive!”

“They’re super artistic, too,” he added. “And I don’t feel like—of course, I respect them. I’m really motivated when I see them on the ice, doing all these crazy elements and beautiful programs and beautiful artistry.”

Rather than seeing that progression as a threat, Carrillo sees it as a natural part of the sport’s evolution.

“I feel like it’s natural in sports to have newcomers and it makes the sport more fun,” he said.

Their presence also gives established skaters a reason to keep developing.

“Without this extra pressure or motivation, it would be hard to develop the sport,” Carrillo explained. “But because of them, it just makes it more competitive. It just makes you a better athlete.”

His response is to learn from them.

“I’m just trying to approach this in the best possible way to learn even from them and apply it into my skating,” he said.

One Season at a Time

Carrillo’s long-term vision extends toward the 2030 Olympic Winter Games, but he is deliberately refusing to look too far ahead.

“Long term, yeah, for sure, it’s 2030,” he said. “But I’m trying to think in terms of season by season, year by year.”

He still has ambitious goals. After experiencing different points in his career, he wants to find out what it would take to become one of the world’s top skaters.

“I’ve been like in the bottom and the middle and I want to know how it feels to be in the top 10 skaters in the world,” he said. “But I know to make that happen, I have to push more in the technical elements.”

That push does not mean abandoning the perspective he has gained along the way. Carrillo wants more quads, but he also wants to maintain his artistry and the connection with audiences that has become part of his identity. He wants to become more comfortable performing under pressure, while continuing to enjoy the process.

Two Olympics have already given Carrillo a career many skaters could only dream of. But rather than treating those accomplishments as the conclusion of his story, he sees them as an opportunity to discover what comes next.

For now, he is taking it one season at a time.

He wants to challenge himself. He wants to keep developing. And, above all, he wants to find out just how far he can go.

“I know I can do more.”