But Malinin stumbled multiple times during his own routine. And he didn’t live up to his “Quad God” nickname, failing to execute several quad jumps, including the quadruple axel, the move that’s helped make him one of figure skating’s most dominant figures.
Instead, Malinin was deducted 72 points because of his mistakes, and after entering the night in first place, he finished completely off the podium.
Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan finished in first place with Yuma Kagiyama and Shun Sato of Japan in second and third, respectively.
Malinin said the pressure of being the favorite ultimately got to him.
“Not a lot of people will understand that. They’ll only understand that from the inside,” he told NBC Washington after. “Going into this competition, especially today, I felt really good. Earlier at practice today, it went really well. I felt like I was ready and all I needed to do was come out here and trust everything to happen but it really just went by so fast. I did not have time to process what really went down.”
Malinin, 21, was expected to dominate the Olympics as he has most competitions over the last several years. Entering the Winter Olympics, Malinin had won two straight World Championships, three straight Grand Prix finals, and three straight U.S. Championships.
In the lead-up to Milan, Malinin told NBC News he would be under “a lot of pressure,” in particular because it was his first Olympics. Still, Malinin was expected to win gold because of how he’s typically far afield of his competitors.
At the Grand Prix final in December, for example, Malinin finished first by 29.88 points. And at last season’s world championships, he cleared second by 31.09 points.
In 2022, Malinin became the first skater to land a quadruple axel in a competition, a four-and-a-half rotation jump that was long considered impossible by many skaters. Malinin’s ability to land such jumps allowed him to dub himself the “Quad God,” and he was expected to do such a jump Friday.
Instead of a quadruple axel, however, Malinin only executed a single. His quadruple loop also turned into a double. And he fell after attempting a quadruple lutz.
“I’m trying to understand what happened specifically, but I know that it’s done,” he said. “… Something felt off, and I don’t know what it was specifically. I’m still trying to understand what that was.”
Malinin’s result was the second disappointing final in as many days for the U.S. figure skating team. On Friday, Madison Chock and Evan Bates — gold-medal favorites and three-time defending world champions — came in second place to French pair Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron.
“I feel like life is sometimes you can feel like you do everything right and it doesn’t go your way,” Bates said after the event, “and that’s life and that’s sport.”
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