Ilia Malinin failed to secure a spot on the medal podium after the men’s free skate event in Milan-Cortina at the 2026 Winter Olympics. Going into the games, Ilia was the favorite to win the top stop and secure gold by a landslide, but he succumbed to the pressure placed on him and failed to even make the medal podium.
Someone who knows the experience of being the favorite male skater to snatch the gold medal at the Winter Olympics is Nathan Chen, who famously fell while competing in the 2018 Olympic Games in PyeongChang. Like Malinin, Chen also lost the top spot on the podium during his competition.
Now acting as a correspondent for Yahoo! Sports, Nathan Chen delivered a heartfelt message about the pressure of competing at the Olympic level and what he imagines Ilia Malinin must have experienced on the ice.
Chen Says That The Crowd May Have Impacted Ilia Melanin’s Performance
View this post on Instagram
Former American figure skater Nathan Chen delivered a heartfelt take on Ilia Malinin’s loss of a medal at the 2026 Olympics, noting that he has been in the exact situation himself. Chen spoke about how the vibe in the arena and the energy of the crowd can impact the mental clarity and acuity of skaters on the ice.
“One of the hardest parts about performing for a huge sold out crowd is that you really can viscerally feel the reaction from the crowd,” described Chen to Yahoo! Sports. “I remember when I went for my first jump and I fell, the whole crowd goes, ‘Ooooh!’ and that just hurts you to your gut, and you get up and you mentally you have to refresh and you have to figure out what went wrong and how can I regroup for the next element.”
“But also, this whole – the energy – changes in the arena and you can feel there’s tension now,” Chen went on to say. “Everyone’s kind of lifted into their seats, and you feel that as a skater and you’re trying to calm yourself back down – resettle – but every mistake that you do compounds and compounds and compounds. Man, I can’t express how challenging that situation was.”
Chen Believes That Ilia Malinin Still Has a Chance For Skating Greatness
Getty“The last three skaters of the competition, Adam Siao Him Fa, Yuma Kagiyama and Ilia Malinin, all had falls, resulting in deductions,” The Athletic notes.
Concluding his commentary on Ilia Malinin’s failure to medal, Chen said, “Ilia is in a position where he is still young, he is still hungry. He’s someone who still has so much potential and he’s certainly someone that we will continue talking about for the next many Olympic cycles.”
Chen finished his broadcast with the message that Ilia will need to reflect on what went wrong in his program and that it will be difficult, but he assured the audience that Ilia Malinin is still a skater to watch even if the “Quad God” did fall victim to the Curse of the Olympic Favorite this time around.
Nathan Chen Says The Crowd May Have Put Pressure On Ilia Malinin