The stage that was supposed to be Ilia Malinin’s life-changing moment turned into the biggest nightmare of his life. The 21-year-old figure skater entered the 2026 Winter Olympics with the hype of a No. 1 finish and a gold medal. But in turn, he ended up with no medals and an 8th ranking. Veteran sportscaster and former tennis star Mary Carillo offered a view on why that might have happened.

“He was uncertain. He said, and he allowed as much. He said maybe I was overconfident, you know? And again, it wasn’t great; a lot of people were falling down, and everybody was pretty tight, you know?” Carillo said to NBC News’ Tom Llamas. “The Kazakhstan kid wins. Right, number one. But yeah, no, spare a thought for him. I mean, it’s just very, very hard to see. You can’t hide in figs [figure skating].”

It all started well for him by landing his first big jump, but then two falls and an incomplete quadruple axel made things tough for him. He missed important jump combinations and couldn’t fully spin in the air properly because of those key mistakes. His score lowered a lot, and he got 15th rank in the free skate segment.

The result of it affected his final score too, which was 156.33 in free skate with a total of 264.49 points. This crucial miss gave Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov the chance to win the gold with a 291.58 score, which was Malinin’s dream. This defeat marks his first loss since November 2023 and the first time since March 2022.

Now, it wasn’t just Carillo who felt the weight of his loss, but even Malinin himself couldn’t believe he actually lost.

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“It’s not a pleasant feeling,” Malinin said. “Honestly, I’m still trying to understand what happened specifically. But it’s done; I can’t change the outcome.”

Malinin also openly talked about the mental toll this entire loss took on him after the game.

“Mentally, it was. It was a weird feeling just going into the program,” Malinin said. “I just had so many thoughts and memories flood right before I got into my starting pose. And it almost, I think, maybe overwhelmed me a little bit. You know, I’ve been through a lot in my life with a lot of, you know, bad and good experiences.”

Being from an overachieving family with both parents as Olympians, the weight of expectations tends to take a toll on him. Yet it’s too soon to judge a player based on one performance because everyone has their own highs and lows. And let’s not forget he is the one who once created a massive record back in 2022.

What makes quad axel so tough for players

The quad axel stands as the most difficult jump in figure skating because of its unique takeoff. It’s different from the flip, toe flip, lutz, salchow, loop, and toe loop. In this, the skaters need to face forward when they launch into the air. So, instead of spinning four times like other quad jumps, a quad axel needs four and a half rotations before landing, which makes it much harder.

So, because of that, for many years, people believed that it was an impossible task until, in September 2022, Malinin proved them wrong. During the US International Figure Skating Classic, he landed a near-perfect quad axel in his free skate as a 17-year-old.

Even retired American figure skater Scott Hamilton stresses how hard the jump can get and how remarkably Malinin executed it.

“I never thought I’d see anybody do a quadruple axel,” Scott Hamilton said. “Not in my lifetime.”

Now, it’s not that Malinin is the first one to ever try it. Other players did sign up for it, but couldn’t succeed. First up on the list is the two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu, who failed. And then there’s Nathan Chen, who practiced it but later stepped down from the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. So, even though Ilia Malinin came 8th at the Milan Cortina Olympics, he does have potential that’s beyond limits.