MILAN — As Ilia Malinin sat in the Kiss-and-Cry section, waiting for his free skate score to be read out after his terrible performance at the 2026 Winter Olympics, he was caught on a hot mic talking about how things would have been different had he gone to the 2022 Beijing Games.
‘Beijing, I would not have skated like that,’ he was heard saying. Then, NBC commentator Johnny Weir told viewers what he said: That he would not have skated so terribly had he already had Olympic experience under his belt.
Malinin could be heard saying: ‘It’s not easy.’ The 21-year-old was later asked about the comment.
‘I think if I went to ’22, then I would have had more experience and know how to handle this Olympic environment,’ he said. ‘But also, I don’t know what the next stages of my life would look like if I went there.’
‘I felt really good this whole day, going really solid, and I just thought that I all I needed to do was go out there and trust the process that I’ve always been doing with every competition,’ he said. ‘But of course, it’s not like any other competitions, it’s the Olympics.”
The 21-year-old was the gold medal favorite entering 2026 Winter Olympics. He took a more than five-point lead into Friday’s free skate. But the self-proclaimed ‘Quad God’ had a disastrous performance, falling twice, bailing on two jumps that were meant to be quads and suffering an epic meltdown on the sport’s biggest stage.
‘I blew it,’ he said after. ‘That’s honestly the first thing that came to my mind, there’s no way that just happened. I was preparing the whole season, I felt so confident with my programs, so confident with everything. That happened, I have no words, honestly.’
‘I was not expecting that. I felt like going into this competition, I was so ready,’ Malinin said. ‘I just felt ready getting on the ice, … maybe I was too confident.
‘It honestly just happened. I can’t process what just happened. It happens.’
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