Even Ilia Malinin Is Mortal

Before Ilia Malinin had his disastrous free skate to lose gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics, there was Yuma Kagiyama—who skated a near-perfect short program only to underperform in his free skate on three out of his four quadruple jumps. And before Kagiyama had his disastrous free skate to, seemingly, lose silver, there was Adam Siao Him Fa—who had a brilliant short program only to miss three of his four quadruple jumps, dropping him all the way to sixth.

Which is to say that, by the time Malinin came up to skate on Friday, his winning gold seemed like a foregone conclusion for everyone in the world, Malinin included. One can imagine that when the primary goal becomes "don't mess up," it becomes exponentially harder to do so. Take all that—and put it on a skater who historically has been driven by doing the impossible and totally unnecessary—and this might well be the result: Malinin fell twice. He popped, or effectively aborted, two more jumps. His final score left him not just without gold, but completely out of medal contention. Japan's Kagiyama won silver after all, his countryman Shun Sato took bronze, and Kazakhstan's Mikhail Shaidorov earned a shocking gold. It was the most deserving podium based on Friday's skates, and also the podium nobody ever considered.

If Malinin were only skating to win gold, he probably would have done it. But there was so much more that Malinin could have done, so he tried for each and every record, when he knew and everyone else knew that all he had to do was not mess up. He wanted to be the first to land a quad Axel on Olympic ice. You could tell because he popped the jump and only landed a single Axel, when all he had to do was not mess up. He wanted to be the first to land seven quads on Olympic ice. You could tell because he went for the broadly despised quad loop, rather than a triple, and popped that into a double loop, when all he had to do was not mess up. The records vanished first; the gold medal was lost later. Malinin walked away from the rink in eighth place.