MILAN, Italy — Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov grabbed Olympic gold in men’s figure skating, while American favorite Ilia Malinin unraveled in the free skate and finished eighth, Feb. 13, 2026. Ilia Malinin’s bid collapsed after he popped his planned quad Axel and took two hard falls, opening the door for Shaidorov’s steadier, high-difficulty night.
The shock result flipped a competition many expected Ilia Malinin to control, and it delivered Kazakhstan a landmark Winter Games moment. Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama won silver and Shun Sato took bronze.
How Ilia Malinin’s Olympic gold bid unraveled
Ilia Malinin entered the men’s free skate with a cushion from the short program, but the program’s first big turning point came early: the jump the world came to see, his quad Axel attempt, became a single Axel. From there, the mistakes stacked — broken combinations, jump errors and two falls — and his score slid far from the level that had made him the prohibitive favorite. Reuters’ event report said Ilia Malinin posted 156.33 in the free skate and totaled 264.49 overall, more than 27 points behind Shaidorov’s 291.58.
Shaidorov, skating earlier in the final group, capitalized. He opened with a triple Axel–quad Salchow combination and kept his program composed enough to stay on top as other contenders stumbled. Ilia Malinin congratulated Shaidorov afterward, but his own expression said the same thing the scoreboard did: the “sure thing” had slipped away.
Ilia Malinin gets support from legends after the fall
In the stands and across the sports world, the reaction quickly shifted from disbelief to support. A Reuters look at the psychological weight of the Olympics noted gymnastics star Simone Biles applauded Ilia Malinin inside the arena, and it detailed how Malinin described the moment as overwhelming — a reminder that even the most dominant athletes can get swallowed by the Games.
Ilia Malinin also had allies who understood the unique pressure of being “the one” everyone expects to win. Time’s on-site account from Milan captured Malinin calling the performance a blow he “didn’t handle,” while skating champion Nathan Chen and others praised the qualities that made Ilia Malinin the sport’s defining technical driver: his fearless rotation, his range of quads, and his willingness to keep pushing the limits even when the risk is obvious.
Shaidorov’s rise was years in the making
Shaidorov’s win will live forever as an upset, but it wasn’t a fluke from nowhere. He arrived in Milan as a proven big-event skater — including a 2025 world silver medal — and he delivered when the moment asked for calm. Reuters’ follow-up on Shaidorov reported he scored 198.64 in the free skate and said the victory carried special meaning for Kazakhstan, a nation whose modern skating identity has long been tied to the late Denis Ten.
That emotional throughline has been visible for a while. The International Skating Union’s recap of Shaidorov’s breakthrough at the 2025 Four Continents Championships in Seoul framed his gold as a continuation of Ten’s legacy, detailing how Shaidorov handled pressure and landed major combinations that signaled he could win at the highest level.
The high-wire act that made Ilia Malinin a favorite
Ilia Malinin’s Olympic stumble landed with extra force because of the arc that brought him here. In 2022, he became the first skater to land a quad Axel in competition — a moment the sport had treated as almost mythic — as described in an Associated Press report from Lake Placid. That single element changed what men’s skating could look like.
Two years later, Ilia Malinin turned innovation into dominance. NBC Sports’ recap of the 2024 world championships described him winning his first world title with a program packed with quads — the kind of jump layout that made Ilia Malinin feel untouchable when he hit it.
And even before the Olympics, Ilia Malinin was openly weighing how much risk is worth taking when the stakes peak. In March 2025, Reuters reported on his talk of “risk versus reward” and the pressure that comes with being the reigning standard-bearer. Milan showed the sport’s harshest truth: maximum difficulty only matters if you can deliver it when the ice gets tight.
What comes next for Ilia Malinin
Ilia Malinin is leaving the men’s event without the medal many assumed was guaranteed, but his Olympics are not empty: he helped the U.S. capture team gold, and he still owns the technical ceiling that has redrawn men’s skating over the last four years. The next step for Ilia Malinin is the unglamorous part — processing the crash, rebuilding confidence, and deciding whether the future is about dialing back the danger or learning to land it when everything is loudest.
For Shaidorov, the title is already history. For Ilia Malinin, it may become fuel — the kind of night that either breaks a favorite or hardens him into something even more durable for the next cycle.
