Ilia Malinin’s catastrophic free skate: ‘I blew it.’

Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesFeb. 13, 2026, 5:32 p.m. ETThere are plenty of iconic nicknames among American sports champions: Magic, Prime Time, Big Papi. On Friday, Ilia Malinin, the overwhelming favorite whose dazzling four-rotation moves earned him that sobriquet, came into the men’s figure skating event with a chance to stamp his name and nickname into the national consciousness.ImageCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut sometimes, it seems, even a god loses.ImageCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesImageCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesImageCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesMalinin backed out of two quad jumps, including the quad Axel, the move only he can do. And he fell on two more quads. Suddenly a planned seven-quad program was down to three successful quads. That left him finishing in a shocking eighth place. “I was not expecting that,” Malinin told NBC right after his program. He suggested he was perhaps “too confident.”ImageCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe gold was won by Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan, who landed five quads. Yuma Kagiyama and Shun Sato of Japan won the other medals.ImageCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesImageCredit...Vincent Alban/The New York TimesSkating 24th out of 24 skaters, Malinin started with a quad flip. But then he passed on the quad Axel, the most difficult jump in skating, which only he has ever landed in competition, making it just a single. After a quad Lutz, he demoted a quad loop to a double.ImageCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesImageCredit...Vincent Alban/The New York TimesIt got worse. He fell on two of the three combination quads he tried later in the program.“He does these ninja flips and rotational things, things that didn’t exist before,” said the 1984 Olympic champion, Scott Hamilton before the routine. “It’s like he’s come from 50 years in the future to show us how far the sport has come.”ImageCredit...Vincent Alban/The New York TimesNot on Friday. “I blew it,” Malinin said. Figure Skating: Men’s Singles › Short Program Free Skate Points Gold Mikhail Shaidorov 92.94 198.64 291.58 Silver Yuma Kagiyama 103.07 176.99 280.06 Bronze Shun Sato 88.70 186.20 274.90 Victor Mather, who has been a reporter and editor at The Times for 25 years, covers sports and breaking news.Doug Mills has been a photographer in the Washington bureau of The Times since 2002. He has covered every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan.Vincent Alban is a photojournalist and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.SKIP