Ilia Malinin arrived at the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Milan-Cortina carrying a weight few athletes ever experience. By the time the Men’s Figure Skating event began, Ilia Malinin wasn’t just a contender – he was the favorite by far.
The skating prodigy who redefined technical possibility and transcended what was previously believed to be humanly possible on the ice failed to secure a spot atop the medal podium after the men’s free skate. Instead, Malinin placed 8th in the event and the gold believed to be his went to Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov.
Ilia Malinin, the “Quad God”, Was Expected to Score Gold
GettyIlia Malinin performs at the 2026 Olympic Games.
The skater who made the quadruple Axel feel inevitable, stepped onto Olympic ice as the gold medal favorite but quickly succumbed to the pressure of the world stage. For Malinin, his coaches, and Team USA, it felt like Ilia winning the gold medal was already history written in pencil. And then, like favorites before him, he met the cruel reality of the Olympic favorite’s curse when he fell during the men’s free skate event and then turned a planned quad jump into a single.
The Curse of the Olympic Favorite isn’t superstition so much as it is structure. The Olympics compress an entire four years of training, or a lifetime for career skaters like Ilia Malinin, into a single week and often sole appearances for many athletes. There is no margin for error, no reset button, and no second skating Grand Prix to make things right. For Malinin, whose rise to the top of the skating world has been defined by audacity and momentum, the Olympics demanded something different: restraint, precision, and emotional control under a spotlight that burns hotter than any other stage in the sport. While waiting for his scores after the free skate, Malinin remarked to his coach that he should have been allowed to skate in the Beijing Winter Olympic Games because he felt that the experience would have prepared him for the raw emotion and pressure of Milan-Cortina.
Prior Olympic Favorites Have Fallen to the Same Fate
GettyNathan Chen of the United States falls while competing in the Figure Skating Team Event – Men’s Single Skating Short Program during the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games at Gangneung Ice Arena on February 9, 2018 in Gangneung, South Korea.
The case of Ilia Malinin succumbing to the pressure on the Olympic stage is not a new tale for the skating world. In past Olympic games, figure skating has seen some of their brightest starts fall to the pressure placed on their shoulders while their competitors are allowed to skate free of the same expectations.
Echoing his predecessors in the sport, Ilia Malinin’s fall on the ice during the free skate in Milan-Cortina was reminiscent of Nathan Chen’s fall at the 2018 Winter Olympics that saw the then-favored Chen lose out on winning gold. Chen’s two-career silver medals at the Olympics became a case study in how the pressure placed upon skating stars at the Olympics can neutralize even the most polished competitor.
Similarly, on the women’s side of the sport, then-favorite Yuna Kim missed out on the gold medal and had to settle for silver at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, while Michelle Kwan failed to win the top podium spot at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. For the Olympic favorites, the act of history repeating itself shows that the world’s attention placed on just one skater can be too much to handle.
The Curse of the Olympic Favorite: How Ilia Malinin Missed the Medal Stand