MILAN — Ilia Malinin finished his long program in tears, not triumph. In the most shockingly devastating performance by a favorite in Olympic figure skating history, the skater who was expected to win the gold medal in the men’s figure skating competition finished eighth.
Yes, eighth.
The Quad God was eighth.
If anyone ever wondered just how intense Olympic pressure is, well, now we know. Malinin, 21, came into the men’s final with a solid five-point lead. He looked invincible. Then the other skaters closest to him started making all kinds of mistakes, not skating well. What a gift this was for Malinin. All he had to do was land a few of his patented quadruple jumps and the Olympic gold medal was his.
But he couldn’t do it. Early in the long program, he popped his quad axel into thin air, then doubled a quad loop and fell on other jumps not once but twice.
‘The pressure of the Olympics really gets you,” Malinin said afterward, answering every question calmly and completely. “The pressure is unreal. It’s almost like I wasn’t aware of where I was in the program. Usually I have more time and more feeling of how it is, but this time, it all went by so fast, and I really didn’t have time to make those changes or make that process different.”
The skater most in control of the sport the past four years was lost on the ice.
‘Coming into the free program, I was really confident,” he said, “just really feeling good about it, and then it’s like it’s right there, and it just left your hands.’
Malinin was so loose going into the final group of skaters for the long program that he teasingly faked doing a backflip as he walked out for his warmup, shaking a finger to the audience as if to say, not yet. Who does that as they march out for the most nerve-wracking moment of their lives? No one, except Malinin.
But then he had a long wait through the five other skaters right behind him in the standings, 40 minutes in all. Something happened when he came out for his long program. His face looked tense. His bravado was gone. He looked worried, nervous.
When the mistakes started happening, he couldn’t stop them.
‘My life has been through a lot of ups and downs, and just before getting into my starting pose, I just felt all of those experiences, memories, thoughts really just rush in, and it just felt so overwhelming. I didn’t really know how to handle it in that moment,” he said.
Delightfully brash, but always with an impish smile, Malinin had been preparing for this moment for quite a few years, winning the last four U.S. titles and last two world championships. He hadn’t lost a competition since 2023. He had welcomed and even embraced the pressure building along the way. It had all been part of his dream.
Until that dream turned into a nightmare.
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