MILAN — U.S. figure skating superstar Ilia Malinin will not take home an individual gold medal from the Milan Cortina Games after a shocking performance in the men’s free skate Friday night, slipping off the podium entirely after he entered as the heavy gold-medal favorite.
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Malinin began the free skate portion of the men’s single skating event with a 5.09-point lead after the short program, and looked to be a shoo-in for gold after an imperfect performance by his chief rival, Yuma Kagiyama.
But Malinin stumbled multiple times during his own routine. And he failed to live up to his “Quad God” nickname, as he was unable to execute a single quadruple axel jump — the move that’s made him one of figure skating’s most dominant figures.
Instead, Malinin was deducted 72 points because of his mistakes, and after entering the night in first place, he finished in eighth.
“I blew it,” Malinin said on the broadcast following his performance. “There’s no way that just happened.”
Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan finished in first place with Yuma Kagiyama and Shun Sato of Japan in second and third, respectively.
Malinin, 21, was expected to dominate the Olympics as he has most competitions over the last several years. Entering the Winter Olympics, Malinin had won two straight World Championships, three straight Grand Prix finals, and three straight U.S. Championships.
In the lead-up to Milan, Malinin told NBC News he would be under “a lot of pressure,” in particular because it was his first Olympics. Still, Malinin was expected to win gold because of how he’s typically far afield of his competitiors.
At the Grand Prix final in December, for example, Malinin finished first by 29.88 points. And at last season’s world championships, he cleared second by 31.09 points.
In 2022, Malinin became the first skater to land a quadruple axel in a competition, a four-and-a-half rotation jump that was long considered impossible by many skaters. Malinin’s ability to land such jumps allowed him to dub himself the “Quad God,” and he was expected to do such a jump Friday.
Instead of a quadruple axel, however, Malinin only executed a single. His quadruple loop also turned into a double. And he fell after attempting a quadruple lutz.
Malinin admitted the pressure affected his performance.
“The pressure of the Olympics, it’s really something different,” he told NBC Washington following his skate. “I think that not a lot of people will understand that. They’ll only understand that from the inside. Going into this competition, especially today, I felt really good. Earlier at practice today, it went really well. I felt like I was ready and all I needed to do was come out here and trust everything to happen but it really just went by so fast. I did not have time to process what really went down.”
He added: “Mentally it was a weird feeling going into the program. I had so many thoughts and memories flood right before I got into my starting pose. I think it maybe overwhelmed me a little bit. I’ve been through a lot in my life — a lot of bad and good experiences. I feel like the pressure of being that Olympic gold-medal hopeful was just something I can’t control now.”
