Figure skating world shocked by Ilia Malinin’s Olympic performance

[ad_1] MILAN — The determine skating neighborhood described the shock they felt watching Ilia Malinin’s mistake-ridden efficiency Friday evening, attempting to assist followers perceive how the game's most dominant athlete carried out to date under expectations.

Getting into the Milan Cortina Olympics because the heavy gold medal favourite, Malinin stumbled a number of occasions throughout his routine and misplaced 72 factors to deductions as he fell from first to eighth place. The self-proclaimed “Quad God” additionally did not carry out his signature quadruple axel bounce and he fell after trying a quadruple lutz.

“I’m in shock,” NBC Sports activities Olympic correspondent and 1984 gold medalist Scott Hamilton mentioned on Friday. “There was no means he might lose. And never solely no means he might lose, no means he wasn’t going to win by 30. Together with his physique of labor and all the things we’ve seen coming into this occasion, he’s unbeatable. I obtained requested, ‘Is anybody in a position to beat Ilia Malinin?’ and I mentioned, ‘Solely Ilia.’ And that occurred tonight.”

Nathan Chen, who received a gold medal within the males’s single skating occasion in 2022, empathized with Malinin. On the 2018 Olympics, Chen struggled throughout his quick program in each crew and particular person competitors after getting into with excessive expectations.

“I can undoubtedly replicate again on my expertise in 2018 after I went into the quick program with loads of strain, loads of issues, loads of doubt,” Chen mentioned in a video for Yahoo Sports activities. “[Malinin] went into his quad axle and singled and so you can see that each single component he began holding again a bit bit extra. ... and by the top of it, simply was not his evening.”

After his struggles, Malinin admitted the strain of the second affected him, saying after the outcome, “All of this strain, the entire media, and simply being the Olympic gold hopeful was lots. It was an excessive amount of to deal with.”

Chen mentioned the expertise of skating within the Olympics is harder than different competitions.

“One of many hardest elements about performing for an enormous sold-out crowd is you may viscerally really feel the response from the gang,” Chen mentioned. “I bear in mind after I went for my first bounce and I fell, the entire crowd went, ‘ooh.’ That simply hurts you to your intestine. Mentally, you need to refresh, you need to work out what went fallacious, but in addition the vitality simply modifications within the enviornment, you may really feel there’s stress now.”

Ilia Malinin falls throughout his skating efficiency on Friday. Jamie Squire / Getty Pictures There was definitely stress early in Malinin’s free skate, when he appeared primed to aim a quadruple axel and finally settled for a single, a bounce that drew an audible response from the gang.

Malinin’s points additionally seemed to be psychological to NBC Sports activities analyst and 1998 Olympic gold medalist Tara Lipinski.

“I don’t assume we are able to even level to something that really occurred technically,” Lipinski mentioned on NBC on Friday evening. “It was all psychological. I by no means thought that he could possibly be off the rostrum.”

Malinin, 21, was anticipated to dominate the Olympics as he’s run away with most worldwide competitions over the previous couple of years and hadn't misplaced since 2023.

After not being chosen for the US crew for the 2022 Video games in Beijing, Malinin has received the final two World Championships, three straight Grand Prix finals and three straight U.S. Championships, usually with enormous leads over second place.

“Each little skater, each little athlete in any sport that’s within the Olympic Video games, throughout summer season and winter, you dream about that second in entrance of your complete world,” NBC Sports activities’ Johnny Weir mentioned Friday. “And if you get there, it’s after all an enormous and monumental achievement, however you then’re there and that is what it seems like.

"You’re impulsively thrust in entrance of your complete world as an alternative of simply your area of interest sport. It will get so enormous, and all the things you’ve ever dreamt about, all the things that you simply’ve ever bled, sweated, or cried for comes all the way down to — in our sport — six minutes in entrance of the world. And that strain is lots to deal with.”

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Figure skating world shocked by Ilia Malinin’s Olympic performance

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