MILAN (AP) — Ilia Malinin had to look no further than the stands Friday night, where Nathan Chen watched the U.S. figure skating star known as “The King of Four Wheels” collapse during the Olympic free skate, for inspiration on what might happen next.
Malinin was the overwhelming favorite to win gold, but he fell twice in a disastrous plan he seemed to have perfected over the past year, causing him to fall all the way down the podium from first place, leaving Mikhail Sedorov to take gold.
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It was eerily similar to what happened at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics.
Chen, who like Marinen was trained by Hall of Fame coach Raphael Arutuyanyan, is considered the favorite to reach the podium in South Korea along with Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu. Instead, Chen fell once during the short program and struggled the rest of the way, leaving him so far behind that even his winning free skate failed to earn him a medal.
A month later he won his first world title. Four years later, Chen won Olympic gold in Beijing.
“I can’t go back and change it, as much as I’d like to,” Marinen said candidly. “You have to accept what happened or what you learned from it and really change or decide what you want to do for the future and how you want to handle things.”
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What makes the 21-year-old Marinen’s fall so shocking isn’t just because he had been the dominant figure skater of his generation, going on an undefeated run more than two years ago and capturing the past two world titles with relative ease.
Everything is ready for him.
One by one, the skaters before him encountered their own problems Friday night, falling on the ice shared by speed skating, which some lamented was not the best surface. Italy’s Daniel Grassl was eliminated in the battle for the podium, as was France’s Adam Siao Him Fa.
Shaidorov was the only one to put in a memorable performance, starting the night in sixth place.
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So Marinen, who won the team free skate gold for the U.S. on Sunday, set out again with a big cushion against her opponents. He only needs to complete a dialed-back version of his toughest program — as he did at the U.S. Championships last month — to win a second gold medal at the Cortina Games in Milan.
“The first quad and a couple of quads, they felt pretty ideal,” Marinen said. “I’m fully prepared.”
However, after he landed four rounds, the problems began. Marinen went for a double on a planned quad, only to fall on another quad—preventing him from completing the second half of his combination sequence—and botch his final jump pass. What was supposed to be a high-scoring four-axle three-and-a-half times turned into an ordinary double axel, and Malinen even fell.
“It’s really difficult when everyone thinks he’s going to win the gold medal. There’s this pressure,” said Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama, the last man to beat Marinen in 2023 and the men’s silver medalist at his second consecutive Winter Olympics.
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“His performance was a bit unusual, if I may comment. But it does prove that this is the Olympics. Things can happen.”
Marinen admitted that his relatively poor short program performance in the team competition put pressure on him. He still seemed a bit behind in the free skate the next night, although it was enough to earn him at least a gold medal in Milan.
“We saw that even though he was human,” Glassl said, “these things could happen to anyone.”
Marinen was noble in defeat.
As he walked off the field, he gave Shaidorov a hug and whispered in his ear: “You deserve it.” Then he answered the same question over and over to dozens of TV crews and reporters from around the world: What just happened?
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“It’s almost like I don’t know where I fit into the program,” Marinen said. “Usually I have more time and more feeling, but this time, it all went by so fast and I didn’t really have time to make those changes or make the process different.”
“I was really confident and it just felt really good,” he said, “and then it was just like it was there and just left your hand.”
The end of a disastrous free skate wasn’t the end for Marinen, though. He remains the reigning world champion, the best figure skater of his generation and once again the favorite to win Olympic gold in France four years later.
“The pressure of the Olympics does get on your nerves. People say there’s a curse at the Olympics, where the favorites always skate poorly at the Olympics,” he said. “It definitely wasn’t easy, but I’m still proud of getting to the finish line.”
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AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
