TIO Public Square
Gold Medals of Life Are Best
by Robert P. Sellers
Among the many outstanding athletes who rightfully deserved America’s excitement before the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, one young man was a media favorite – figure skater Ilia Malinin.
Ilia’s Sports Heritage
Ilia Malinin is an American competitive figure skater, born in Fairfax, Virginia, in December 2004. His parents are Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, both former Olympic figure skaters. Baby Ilia was given the masculine inflection of his mother’s surname because his parents felt his father’s name would be too difficult to pronounce. Tatiana won numerous international tournaments and was a ten-time Uzbekistan national champion. Roman skated for Russia before switching to Uzbekistan and was a seven-time Uzbek national champion. Ilia’s maternal grandfather, Valery Malinin, was a skating competitor for the Soviet Union and is currently a professional figure skating coach in Russia. Clearly, Ilia comes from a very talented, supportive and sport-savvy family whose passion for figure skating encouraged him to begin training in 2010 at the age of six.
Ilia’s Competitive Experience
As a child, Ilia preferred playing soccer to practicing for hours in a cold arena, but his grandfather advised patience, assuring his parents, “He'll [gain] his triple jumps, [and then] you won't be able to drag him away” [Lynn Rutherford, “Ilia Malinin’s journey to a Figure Skating World Championship medal,” quoted in Ibid.]. Once the boy committed to the sport, he worked very hard, and his dedication and effort began to be rewarded. He was the 2016 U.S. national juvenile champion at the age of twelve, the 2017 U.S. national intermediate champion at thirteen, and the 2019 U.S. national novice bronze medalist at fifteen. He performed his first quadruple jumps – the toe loop and Salchow – as a sixteen-year-old at the 2020 Skate America competition and soon thereafter acquired the nickname “Quad God.” He is the only skater to successfully execute a fully-rotated quadruple Axel in competition – 4 ½ turns in the air. At the senior level of skating, Ilia has become known for multiple quads planned and executed in his routines – sometimes as many as seven in a single event, and often including extremely difficult quad-quad combinations.
Coming into the 2026 Winter Olympics, Ilia held the world junior record for the men’s short program, free skate, and combined score, along with the senior record for the men’s free skate. He is a four-time U.S. national champion (2023-2026), three-time Grand Prix Final champion (2023-2025), four-time Challenger Series gold medalist (2023-2026), and two-time World champion (2024-2025).
Final champion (2023-2025), four-time Challenger Series gold medalist (2023-2026), and two-time World champion (2024-2025).
Understandably then, the Quad God was expected to win the individual figure skating gold medal at the Milan Cortina Olympics. He was viewed, in fact, as the “inevitable winner” of the men’s individual gold medal, considered by many experts to be “unbeatable” because of his technical skill. The expectations of his sweeping the Olympic men’s figure skating competition were massive.
Ilia’s Olympic Unraveling
Ilia was not in first place after his short program in the team competition, but he was excellent in the free skate. He beat Shun Sato, a Japanese skater, whose 194.86 total points were bested by Malinin’s 200.03 points, enabling the U.S. to win the team gold medal by a margin of only one point. With the excitement growing and predictions of his coming victory multiplying, Ilia confirmed everyone’s assumptions with an outstanding individual short program. Chris Schleicher – a former competitive figure skater and writer for Slate Magazine, wrote:
After the performance that Malinin threw down in Tuesday’s short program, which staked him to a five-point lead over Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama, I can confidently tell you that he will be the men’s figure skating champion of the Milan Cortina Olympics.
As a figure skating expert, I feel it is my responsibility to tell you that Malinin is unbeatable. On the other hand, I feel a bit like I’m a shipbuilder calling the Titanic unsinkable. We make proclamations, and the gods laugh at us. Yes, yes, and I say this rolling my eyes, “anything is possible.” [But] I have no doubts that Malinin is on his way to becoming an Olympic legend. You won’t want to miss his free skate on Friday, which could be one of the greatest in the history of the sport.
But Ilia’s admirers in the packed arena did not know the young skater was wrestling with self-doubt and was struggling to ignore the pressure everyone had placed on his shoulders. ESPN later reported, “Malinin bailed out of his famed quad axel in the air for his second jump and then unraveled. For someone who had made it look so easy, so effortless, over the past three years, the weight of it all suddenly got to him” The crowd – including some Olympic greats like Simone Biles and Nathan Chen – were stunned. Ilia later related that as he held his opening pose, he was overwhelmed by nerves he could not control. "I just felt like all the ... traumatic moments of my life really just started flooding my head, and there were just so many negative thoughts that just flooded into there," Malinin said. "And I just did not handle it."
The Quad God’s downfall was extremely public, immediately internationally observed. According to ESPN:
Malinin, the two-time reigning world champion who had an unbeaten streak dating to 2023, landed his high-scoring opening quad flip jump but then struggled with the axel jump. There was a successful quad lutz, but he doubled what was a planned quad loop. Malinin soon fell on a quad lutz, preventing him from doing the second jump (a triple toe loop) of the combination.
In just four minutes, the routine, which was assumed to lead him to a gold medal and the top of the victory podium shockingly, put Malinin in 8th place.
Ilia’s Amazing Response
Despite being distraught, heartbroken and embarrassed, Ilia Malinin – barely 21 years old – responded with a maturity many people three or four times his age could not have managed, especially when every single facial expression, body language cue, or spoken or mouthed word was being televised and scrutinized.
As soon as it was evident that Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov had won the gold, Ilia came to him, hugged him, and spoke privately to the young competitor. For Shaidorov, – whom some observers described as awkward and shy when off the ice – receiving that almost instant congratulations from a skater he had never imagined defeating must surely have been life-changing.
Malinin then turned and began walking backstage, perhaps to be alone with his thoughts. But before Malinin could reach the solace of silence and privacy, he had to pass through a narrow passageway where journalists and camera operators were waiting. Jummy Olabanji, from News4 Washington, stopped him and asked, “Ilia, not the outcome that you wanted, but how are you feeling after that skate?” What must Malinin have been thinking at that point, when the pain was still so fresh? He was extremely composed, however, answering: “I don’t know, honestly. It’s a lot to handle. The pressure of the Olympics – it’s really something different. … Mentally, it was a weird feeling, just going into the program. I just had so many thoughts and memories flood right before I got into my starting pose, and I think maybe it overwhelmed me a little bit.”
Despite the constant media attention and repeated questions about Ilia’s disappointing performance, however, when the women’s individual figure skating competition commenced, he was in the crowd cheering for his teammates. The likelihood his appearance in the arena could bring further exposure did not stop him from supporting his friends.
Finally, Ilia was invited to participate in the exhibition gala at the end of all the figure skating competitions. I cannot imagine the concerns he must have had visualizing another fall or failed quad. But the routine he planned was perfectly executed. Even more remarkably, it was very personally revealing. Instead of a sequined costume, he wore a dark sweatshirt and distressed jeans. Skating to “Fear” by NF (Nathan Feuerstein), his choreography portrayed “a bold young man facing immense pressure, constant criticism, and high expectations, and eventually buckling under the weight of it all, falling to his knees and drawing into his hoodie to hide.” It was a raw statement on mental health and resilience and it gave his fellow athletes and the appreciative audience much to contemplate.
Ilia’s True Medal
USA sports columnist, Christine Brennan, in a Good Morning America interview with Michael Strahan, explained she had covered Ilia’s progress for the entire time he has been at the top of his sport. Asked about her reaction to Malinin’s social media post about “fighting invisible battles,” she said, “He is an introspective young man. He is polite and kind. He thinks about answers. We saw it right afterwards when he ran the gauntlet of what we call the mix cell, where he did interview after interview. When have we seen athletes throw their helmet and get angry, and he was so calm and so thoughtful and respectful. Just a class act [in] every way,”
Spectators in the arena and around the world saw this young man acting admirably. He influenced the life of a young, timid competitor from Kazakhstan by affirming and encouraging him. He was kind, respectful, calm and thoughtful to journalists insistent upon interviewing him, even in his moments of greatest distress. He was eager to support his fellow U.S. team members, fully aware that would expose him to further scrutiny. He became a remarkable role model for youngsters around the world who were carefully watching and wanting to imitate him.
To my mind, Ilia Malinin not only comes home with a team gold medal but also returns to George Mason University, to his friends and strangers alike, with a trophy much more valuable. Ilia has earned the respect and admiration of a grateful nation pleased to call him our own. After all, gold medals of life are the very best.
