The number next to his name made no sense.
Eighth place. Ilia Malinin. Those two things had never appeared together before—not in three years, not once since 2023. The 21-year-old American had arrived at Milan Cortina 2026 as the untouchable favorite, five points clear, the “Quad God” everyone expected to rewrite Olympic history.
Then something invisible broke.
“All the traumatic moments of my life really just started flooding my head,” Malinin told reporters on Friday night at the Milano Ice Skating Arena, his voice steady but his eyes betraying the shock still coursing through him.
The routine that followed was nothing like him. Two falls. Sloppy jumps. A simplicity that didn’t match the athlete who performs quadruple Axels—a move so difficult only he has ever landed it in competition.
The crowd gasped louder with each mistake. Supporters roared with encouragement, desperate to lift him. But the American who usually carries swagger—some call it arrogance—looked totally exposed.
“When I took my starting pose in the middle of the rink, the nerves really kicked in,” he said. “There were just so many negative thoughts that just flooded into there.”
His father and coach Roman Skorniakov sat beside him when the score came through. Both stared at the screen, unable to process what they were seeing.
Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan stood on top of the podium instead, himself barely able to comprehend his gold medal. Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama had faltered just before Malinin, opening a path the American couldn’t walk through.
Sports analyst Christine Brennan called it “as big an upset in sports as we’ve probably ever seen.”
But here’s the twist: this has happened before. Nathan Chen, the “Quad King,” fell apart at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics and finished fifth. Four years later, he came back and won gold.
Malinin waved to fans before his skate, masking everything he felt inside. “When I looked so confident in the buildup, joking with the crowd,” he admitted, “my smile masked how I truly felt.”
The question now: can he do what Chen did?
What to watch next: Malinin’s response to this defeat will define whether he becomes an Olympic champion or a cautionary tale about pressure.
Sources: Ilia Malinin, Christine Brennan, CNN
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