The gold medal in men’s figure skating went to Ilia Malinin. Taking to the ice for the night’s final routine in the men’s free skate, the way was clear for an easy evening, prompting Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir to weigh in on whether Malinin would actually deliver his high-difficulty performance, or slide to gold with an easier plan. Five minutes later, Malinin suffered one of the deepest collapses in Winter Olympic history.
Initially, there was a belief that Malinin, the god of quads, could perform up to seven quads in his free skate performance, something that had never been achieved before. However, the skating stakes plummeted after Malinin’s biggest competition, Japan’s Yumi Kagiyama, had three incomplete landings and came in second. This meant that Malinin could basically phone in and still win gold.
Malinin took the ice looking relaxed and in control and completed his first quad with ease. Then everything went wrong. He attempted his iconic quadruple axel, but was forced to abandon it and only completed one. Another jump came up, this time a quadruple salchow, but once again Malinin jumped and completed a single. Points were being cut at a spectacular rate. Then the unthinkable happened: He lined up for a quadruple-triple combination, jumped once more to settle for a double, and then fell to the landing.
To give you an idea of how wild this was in real time, here’s my reaction in our Slack.
Despite entering the free skate with a five-point lead, Malinin placed 15th in the free skate rankings with 156.33, leading to an eighth-place finish, a long way from the podium. It’s a great way to tell a Cinderella story, with Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov, who placed fifth after the short program, taking gold and taking the medal that everyone expected to belong to Malinin.
Coming off the ice distraught, The Quad knew he wasn’t going to get a medal in his first Olympic Games in the individual event. Dazed, he was heard telling his father: “I don’t understand. I’ve never skated like that.”
It was one of the most dramatic collapses we have seen in the history of the Winter Olympics. A devastating end for a figure skating legend. Malinin will always have his team’s gold, but this defeat as individual champion will haunt him until the next matches.