Figure skating world shocked by Ilia Malinin’s Olympic performance
MILAN — The figure skating community described the shock it felt watching Ilia Malinin’s misguided performance Friday night, trying to help fans understand how the sport’s most dominant athlete performed far below expectations.
Entering the Milan Cortina Olympics as the heavy favorite for the gold medal, Malinin stumbled several times during his routine and lost 72 points to deductions as he fell from first to eighth place. The self-proclaimed “Quad God” also failed to complete his quadruple axel jump and fell after attempting a quadruple lutz.
“I’m in shock,” Scott Hamilton, NBC Sports Olympic correspondent and 1984 gold medalist, said Friday. “He had no chance of losing. And not just no chance of losing, no chance he wouldn’t win at 30. With his work and everything we’ve seen leading up to this event, he’s unbeatable. I was asked, ‘Can anyone beat Ilia Malinin?’ and I said, ‘Only Ilia”. And it happened tonight.
Nathan Chen, who won a gold medal in the men’s single skating event in 2022, sympathized with Malinin. At the 2018 Olympics, Chen struggled during her short program, both in the team and individual competition, after competing with high expectations.
“I can definitely look back on my experience in 2018 when I went into the short program with a lot of pressure, a lot of worry, a lot of doubt,” Chen said in a video for Yahoo Sports. “[Malinin] went into his quad axle and did a single and so you can see that each element he started to hold a little bit more. …and in the end, it just wasn’t his night.
After his struggles, Malinin admitted that the pressure of the moment had affected him, saying after the result: “All the pressure, all the media, and just being the prospect for Olympic gold, it was a lot. It was too much to handle.”
Chen said the experience of skating at the Olympics is more difficult than other competitions.
“One of the most difficult aspects of performing in front of a huge crowd is viscerally feeling the crowd’s reaction,” Chen said. “I remember when I did my first jump and fell, the whole crowd was like ‘ooh.’ It just hurts your gut. Mentally you have to refresh yourself, you have to understand what went wrong, but also the energy changes in the arena, you feel there is tension now.
There was certainly tension at the start of Malinin’s free skate, when he looked ready to attempt a quadruple axel and ultimately settled for a single, a jump that drew an audible reaction from the crowd.
Malinin’s problems also appeared to be mental to NBC Sports analyst and 1998 Olympic gold medalist Tara Lipinski.
“I don’t think we can even point fingers at what actually happened technically,” Lipinski said on NBC Friday night. “It was all mental. I never thought he could leave the podium.”
Malinin, 21, was expected to dominate the Olympics as he has won most international competitions in recent years and has not lost since 2023.
After not being selected to the United States team for the 2022 Games in Beijing, Malinin has won the last two World Championships, three consecutive Grand Prix Finals and three consecutive U.S. Championships, often by huge margins over second place.
“Every little skater, every little athlete in any sport in the Olympics, summer or winter, dreams of this moment in front of the whole world,” Johnny Weir of NBC Sports said Friday. “And when you get there, of course it’s a huge, monumental achievement, but then you’re there and this is what it feels like.
“You’re suddenly thrust in front of the whole world instead of just your niche sport. It becomes so huge, and everything you’ve ever dreamed of, everything you’ve bled or sweated or cried for comes down to – in our sport – six minutes in front of the world. And that pressure is hard to deal with.”
