The first words that came to Ilia Malinin‘s mind as tears streamed down his face on Olympic ice were: “I blew it.”
“That’s honestly the first thing that came to my mind,” he said just moments after his heartbreaking final skate. “There’s no way that just happened.”
The 21-year-old American skater was struggling to process what was arguably the worst performance of his career — and it unfolded on the world stage.
“I was not expecting that,” Malinin said just moments after he left the ice. “Going into this competition I was so ready. I just felt ready going on that ice. I think maybe that might have been the reason, is I was too confident it was going to go well.”
A gold medal favorite by a large margin, Malinin was staring down the potential for Olympic history. But he fell twice during a disastrous free skate on Friday night, and landed not only out of gold medal contention, but off the podium entirely — an eighth place finish.
“A reminder that nothing is certain in sports,” announcer Terry Gannon said.
Tears streamed down his face as Malinin finished his skate and left the ice.
“It is extremely high stakes, high pressure,” Olympian Mariah Bell said after watching the performance. “Especially for somebody like Ilia, he’s coming in with all of the expectation in the world on his shoulders, and I think Ilia showed us today that while he is this incredible athlete, he is a human being just like all of us, and it just wasn’t his day.”
Malinin led by a comfortable margin after the short program and merely had to deliver a mediocre performance Friday night to add individual gold to his team gold medal. Instead, the two-time reigning world champion saw one of the worst nights of his career and left a star-packed crowd inside Milano Ice Arena sitting in stunned silence.
Mikhail Shaidorov finished with a career-best 291.58 points to give his nation its first gold medal of the Winter Games, while Yuma Kagiyama earned his second consecutive Olympic silver medal and Japanese teammate Shun Sato took bronze.
U.S. figure skating star Ilia Malinin stumbled through uncharacteristic mistakes in the Olympic free skate. Mariah Bell breaks down what happened during the men’s free skate.
Malinin finished with 264.49 points, his worst total score in nearly four years, and one that ended a two-plus year unbeaten streak that covered 14 full competitions around the world.
“I’ve been through a lot,” Malinin said. “Being the Olympic gold hopeful is really just a lot to deal with, especially for my age.”
Malinin had faced a noticeable amount of pressure during the Games and had earlier admitted he wasn’t skating like himself heading into the final event. Both of his skates in the team event were mediocre by only his lofty standards, but he felt much more comfortable during his short program, and it was reflected on the ice, where his score of 108.16 was less than a point off his world-leading mark this season.
“The nerves just went so overwhelming,” Malinin said, “and especially going into that starting pose, I just felt like all the … traumatic moments of my life really just started flooding my head, and there’s just like, so many negative thoughts that just flooded into there and I just did not handle it.”
Malinin had decided to practice early in the day at U.S. Figure Skating’s alternate training base in Bergamo, just outside of Milan, allowing him to escape the Olympic bubble and avoid sitting in the arena all night. And he was the essence of calm throughout his warmup, never once falling in all of his practice jumps while wearing his familiar glittering black and gold ensemble.
Then came a performance that might well haunt Malinin for the rest of his career.
When asked what led to the unexpected performance, Malinin said it was “definitely mental.”
“Just now finally experiencing that Olympic atmosphere,” he said. “It’s crazy. It’s not like any other competition.”
“It is extremely high stakes, high pressure,” Bell said. “Especially for somebody like Ilia, he’s coming in with all of the expectation in the world on his shoulders, and I think Ilia showed us today that while he is this incredible athlete, he is a human being just like all of us, and it just wasn’t his day.”
Shaidorov was just as shocked as everyone as the realization hit that he had won the gold medal. But Malinin didn’t let his sorrow get in the way of his sportsmanship.
“I went up to him and I congratulated him,” Malinin said of the new Olympic champion, “because watching him skate – I watched him the locker room – I’m just so proud of him. I heard that he had not a great season.”
Malinin still leaves the Winter Olympics a gold medalist in the team event, but as for what comes next, he’s determined to prevent what happened on Friday from happening again.
“I think obviously I should take the stuff that I learned from here and use it to my knowledge to see what I can do in the future for this to not happen,” he said.
“He’s an incredible person, and we’re going to see so much more of him,” Bell said. “The bottom line is ice is slippery when you’re at the Olympics.”
The men’s free skate event will re-air in primetime on NBC starting at 7:30 p.m. CT.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
