Ilia Malinin turned an Olympic collapse into another world title. One month after finishing eighth in the men’s free skate in Milan, the 21-year-old won his third consecutive world championship in March and reminded figure skating how quickly a storyline can flip.
That is why Malinin is drawing attention again now. He was the favorite for the men’s individual event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, a skater already known as the Quad God for landing the first quad axel in competition and becoming the only athlete to complete seven quad jumps in a single programme. He had also been nearly untouchable since his senior debut in 2021, winning by margins of more than 70 points at times, so the Olympic result landed like a shock rather than a stumble.
In Milan, he still helped secure victory for his country in the skating team event. But in the men’s free skate, he fell twice and finished eighth, while Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan took the title. Malinin did not hide from the setback. “I have so much more to learn,” he said afterward, adding that he went to the Olympics thinking he knew everything and that small things he had not accounted for added up in the wrong way. He embraced Shaidorov after the result was decided, and later said the support he received made him realize “it’s not just about the medals.”
What followed was the kind of response that separates a great skater from a merely gifted one. Malinin vowed to redeem himself at the World Championships in March and delivered, winning his third straight world title just a month after the Olympic free skate. Looking back, he said the setback helped him grow and was probably necessary. For a skater whose jumps have already changed the sport, the unanswered question now is not whether he can recover from a bad night, but how far his dominance can stretch after it.
In April, he was in Greenville, South Carolina, after an overnight drive from Florida for a Dazed photo shoot during the off-season and while in the middle of a two-month US arena tour with Stars on Ice. That is the backdrop for the next phase of the season for Malinin: not another Olympic test yet, but a skater still carrying both the weight of a fall in Milan and the proof, in March, that he can answer it.
