Ilia Malinin misses out on Olympic medal after fall in free skate, finishes 8th

In shocking fashion at the 2026 Winter Olympics, the American figure skater Ilia Malinin he didn’t make the podium on Friday, missing out on a medal after falling twice during the free skate. Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan took home the gold.

Malinin, known as the “Quad God” for his talent in the quadruple jump, looked upset after his skid.

The 21-year-old, who had a comfortable lead after the short program, had to work hard to add each gold to his gold medal haul. won the team event. Instead, he was fighting back tears after one of the worst nights of his career, which left the star-studded crowd inside the Milano Ice Arena in silence.

Shaidorov finished with 291.58 points to give his nation its first gold medal of the Winter Games, while Yuma Kagiyama he won his second consecutive Olympic silver medal while his Japanese counterpart Shun Sato took the bronze.

Then there is Malinin, who fell to eighth place. He finished with 264.49 points, ending a two-year unbeaten streak that included 14 full events, including the last two events he won easily.

“Honestly, yes, I didn’t expect that,” he said. “I felt ready to go into this competition. I just felt ready to continue on that ice. I think maybe that was the reason, that I was very confident that it would go well.”

Many of Malinin’s trips to Milan have felt small.

Beaten by Kagiyama in the short program of the team event, he later admitted that the pressure of competing in the Olympics had begun to get to him. Nor was she dominant despite a tiebreaker against Sato in the team free skate, who earned the Americans’ second straight gold medal in the event.

But during his one short show Tuesday night, Malinin’s fearless swagger and unmatched spunk were back. He has a five-point lead over Kagiyama and Adam Siao Him Fa of France, who looked like they would not win until Friday night.

Malinin decided to practice early in the morning at another US Figure Skating training facility in Bergamo, just outside of Milan, allowing her to escape the Olympic bubble and avoid staying on the rink all night. And she was the picture of calm throughout her warm-up, not once falling during her entire practice jump while wearing her black and gold ensemble.

Then came a game that would haunt Malinin for the rest of his career.

He opened with a quad flip, one of the seven he recorded in his program, then appeared to follow up with the only quad axel he’s ever achieved in competition, but had to bail out. He recovered to get a quad lutz – and then the problems began.

Malinin did only two instead of the planned quad loop, throwing his time. He fell on the quad lutz, preventing him from doing the second part of the quad lutz-triple toe loop combination that would have earned him big points. And on his last jump, which was supposed to be a quad salchow-triple axel for high scores, Malinin could only manage a double salchow – and he fell on that.

When the music ended, Malinin was left trying to hide his sadness from the crowd that included Nathan Chen, the 2022 Olympic champion; seven-time Olympic gold medal gymnast Simone Biles, and actor Jeff Goldblum and his wife, Emilie.

Shaidorov was as shocked as anyone when he received the gold medal.