Before Ilia Malinin had his disastrous free skate to lose gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics, there was Yuma Kagiyama—who skated a near-perfect short program only to underperform in his free skate on three out of his four quadruple jumps. And before Kagiyama had his disastrous free skate to, seemingly, lose silver, there was Adam Siao Him Fa—who had a brilliant short program only to miss three of his four quadruple jumps, dropping him all the way to sixth.
Which is to say that, by the time Malinin came up to skate on Friday, his winning gold seemed like a foregone conclusion for everyone in the world, Malinin included. One can imagine that when the primary goal becomes "don't mess up," it becomes exponentially harder to do so. Take all that—and put it on a skater who historically has been driven by doing the impossible and totally unnecessary—and this might well be the result: Malinin fell twice. He popped, or effectively aborted, two more jumps. His final score left him not just without gold, but completely out of medal contention. Japan's Kagiyama won silver after all, his countryman Shun Sato took bronze, and Kazakhstan's Mikhail Shaidorov earned a shocking gold. It was the most deserving podium based on Friday's skates, and also the podium nobody ever considered.
If Malinin were only skating to win gold, he probably would have done it. But there was so much more that Malinin could have done, so he tried for each and every record, when he knew and everyone else knew that all he had to do was not mess up. He wanted to be the first to land a quad Axel on Olympic ice. You could tell because he popped the jump and only landed a single Axel, when all he had to do was not mess up. He wanted to be the first to land seven quads on Olympic ice. You could tell because he went for the broadly despised quad loop, rather than a triple, and popped that into a double loop, when all he had to do was not mess up. The records vanished first; the gold medal was lost later. Malinin walked away from the rink in eighth place.
There is a version of events where the skater who went on ice after Kagiyama would choose to trot out a scaled back, easily executable program to seal the gold: a reasonable, say, five (five!) quads, with a triple Axel and a triple loop. But Malinin has always possessed a psyche unfathomable to the ordinary spectator. He has never been that sort of skater. Should he not still go for the quad Axel, the seven quads, the records? In the past, he has and it's worked. For the first time ever, it failed him.
It's easy to wonder. What if Kagiyama had skated his free program clean? What if Malinin had ordinary pressure to perform, rather than the outsized weight of making history? Malinin did some of the wondering himself in the kiss-and-cry: If only the Olympic selection committee had sent him to Beijing, so his first Olympic opportunity wouldn't have been his best Olympic opportunity. (Irrespective of whether or not U.S. Figure Skating made the correct decision in 2022, from Malinin's perspective, it is a fair to feel. After all, look at Nathan Chen's 2018.) If only Malinin had, like Chen, tanked the short program instead, and could have skated without pressure in the free. If, if, if—a wise man once said something about that.
Figure skating's most important competition rolls around once every four years. Before now, Malinin seemed immune to the inconsistency that has plagued the quad era of figure skating. Everyone had bad competitions but, until today, not Malinin. The bizarre streak of undefeated appearances since 2023 has finally come to an end, in the cruelest manner possible. Malinin is, even with the aptly self-appointed quad god moniker, still mortal. All it took to reveal that fact was competing under the most pressure any athlete can feel.
Here's one more for the unfathomable psyche of Ilia Malinin. Aside from the kiss-and-cry audio—captured seconds after a heartbreaking loss, when any human being would be angry and bitter—Malinin showed remarkable grace. After his score was announced, he immediately went to hug Kazakhstani skater and fellow 21-year-old Mikhail Shaidorov, who was in the hot seat while he watched his five-quad free skate go from earning him an Olympic bronze, to an Olympic silver, to, most improbably of all, an Olympic gold. Shaidorov is the first figure skater and second-ever Kazakhstani athlete to win gold at the Winter Olympics, an accomplishment that will be no less sweet for being effectively welcomed in by three consecutive funerals.
What's next for Malinin? Forget about four years from now. Speaking with NBC just moments after the scores were announced, Malinin simply said, with remarkable poise, "Honestly, it happened. I can't process what just happened. So, it happens." Even after Malinin knew, just partway through his free skate, that he would not win gold, he—like Kagiyama before him, and Siao Him Fa before him, and countless other skaters before them—still had to fight through each miserable minute until the very end. Is that not the cruelest part of figure skating? It happens. Then you pick yourself off the ice and move on.
