Ilia Malinin, renowned for his achievements in figure skating, unexpectedly finished 8th in men's singles at the 2026 Winter Olympics after a series of falls, missing out on a medal.
Following his eighth-place finish, Malinin came forward to explain what happened, per Marcus Thompson II of The Athletic. He was under tremendous pressure to succeed on the world stage and conceded that it ultimately became overwhelming.
“But, of course, it’s not like any other competition,” he said. “It’s the Olympics. And I think people only realize the pressure and the nerves that actually happen from the inside. So it was really just something that overwhelmed me. And I just felt like I had no control.”
Reflecting on his performance, Malinin is still searching for an explanation of what went wrong.
“Honestly, I can’t understand what it was now,” Malinin said. “Of course, in the moment, it definitely felt like not only nerves. But maybe the ice was also not the best condition for what I would like to have. And that’s something I cannot complain about because we’re all put in that situation where we have to skate no matter what happens. So that’s not really an excuse I can give.”
Malinin's unexpected performance comes after another disappointment for the Americans in Figure Skating, as the pair of Madison Chock and Evan Bates received silver in a controversial pairs competition.
Expectations were high for the U.S. team, amplifying the impact of these losses.
The ‘Quad God' has left a mark on U.S. Figure Skating. He's a two-time World Champion, the first to land a quadruple Axel at the 2022 U.S. International Figure Skating Classic, and the first to complete seven quads at the 2025 Grand Prix Final.
Despite his individual setback, Malinin did secure a gold medal in the team competition. Still, his singles loss marks his first in two years.
“I just felt like all the just traumatic moments of my life really just started flooding my head,” he said. “And there’s just like so many negative thoughts that just flooded into there and I just did not handle them.”
“You’ve trained for this, you’ve practiced this a million times,” he said he told himself, “and you should not treat it as any different competition. But something was off and I definitely did not realize it until the program ended.”
Given his technical achievements, his maneuvers have placed him alongside figure skating greats, such as the late Dick Button, who revolutionized the sport in the 20th century.
