Ilia Malinin Misses Olympic Podium After Disastrous Free Skate

Beijing – The men’s figure skating competition at the Winter Olympics ended in jaw-dropping fashion on Friday, Feb. 13, when American prodigy Ilia Malinin, the self-styled “Quad God,” plummeted from first to eighth after a calamitous free skate that will be replayed for years as a cautionary tale of pressure and expectation.

Malinin, 21, arrived at these Games as the heaviest of heavy favorites. He had swept the last 14 international events he entered, become the only man to land a quad Axel in competition, and boldly attempted seven quadruple jumps in a single program. A dazzling short program on Wednesday gave him a five-point cushion atop the standings and the aura of inevitability.

All that unraveled in four minutes and 30 seconds.

Skating last, Malinin opened with a clean quad Salchow, but the historic quad Axel—poised to be the first ever landed at an Olympics—was downgraded to a shaky double. From that moment, the program spiraled. Subsequent jumps were under-rotated, two-footed or fallen upon; footwork that normally crackled looked cautious; spins drifted off center. By the time he struck his final pose, Malinin had hemorrhaged 72 points on jumping errors alone, a deficit impossible to overcome.

The scoreboard told the story: Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov soared from fourth to gold with a brilliant long program, while Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama and Shun Sato claimed silver and bronze. Malinin, who once looked untouchable, finished eighth overall, the 72-point drop in the free skate the largest collapse in Olympic men’s skating under the current scoring system.

Replays revealed no obvious technical flaw—no mis-timed takeoff, no ill-prepared ice. Coaches and analysts inside Capital Indoor Stadium agreed: the meltdown was mental, born of the weight of a narrative that painted him as invincible. Media outlets amplified the “Quad God” mythology; fans turned every practice into a social-media event; Malinin himself embraced the moniker, confident his skill could shoulder the hype. On sport’s biggest stage, the burden proved too great.

The scene mirrored recent Olympic heartbreaks: Mikaela Shiffrin’s uncharacteristic exits in Beijing 2022, Simone Biles’ withdrawal from multiple gymnastics finals in Tokyo 2021. Each reminder that athletic genius, when placed on a pedestal too high, can wobble when the athlete finally looks down.

Malinin left the ice expressionless, later offering a brief wave to the crowd before disappearing through the mixed-zone tunnel. He is scheduled to speak Saturday, but for now the United States will wait at least four more years for its first individual men’s figure-skating gold since Evan Lysacek in 2010.

The American women begin their chase on Tuesday, Feb. 17, with Alysa Liu, Amber Glenn and Isabeau Levito set to compete. Whether they can handle the spotlight better than their celebrated teammate remains to be seen.