The Olympic men’s figure skating competition came to a shocking end on Friday, Feb. 13. Heavy favorite Ilia Malinin, the American skater known as the “Quad God” for his arsenal of quadruple-rotation jumps, crashed off the podium after a calamitous free skate. His short program performance put him in first place with a massive five-point lead; his long program dropped him all the way down to eighth.
Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov took home the gold medal thanks to a brilliant long program, while Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama and Shun Sato took home silver and bronze, respectively.
A season-defining shock
It was supposed to be the surest thing at the Olympics. Malinin, the unstoppable American figure skater, was destined for gold.
He entered these Games with staggering statistics. He was the only man in the field capable of landing a quad axel and the only one who dared attempt seven quads in one program. He’d won every single one of the last 14 international competitions he’d entered. He’d been the clean-up hitter for the United States in the Olympic team skating competition, and he’d performed this exact free skate with steely confidence to deliver his nation a gold medal.
Here, though, Malinin was tentative. He nailed his first jump, a routine quad salchow, but bailed early on a planned quad axel — set to be the first in Olympic history — and turned it into a double. From there, it all fell apart. Malinin’s balance and confidence deserted him, and he struggled his way through even the simplest elements of his program.