Nathan Chen Shares Powerful Message to Ilia Malinin After Olympic Skating Meltdown

American superstar Ilia Malinin shockingly failed to medal in the men’s figure skating final at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. | Photographs by Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

Former figure skating gold medalist Nathan Chen was once where Ilia Malinin is now: solemnly looking back on a disappointing Olympic performance.

Malinin stunningly stumbled in the men’s individual final on Friday night to fall out of medal contention, placing eighth overall following his free skate at the Milan Cortina Olympics. The 21-year-old fell twice and looked shaky from the get-go, as he pulled out of his signature move, the quad axel, on his second jump. Afterward, Malinin was understandably heartbroken and still trying to pick up the pieces from his full-blown Olympic meltdown.

How did the sport’s clear favorite fall so far from his pedestal? Fellow American figure skater Nathan Chen, who clinched gold in the 2022 Beijing Games, had some thoughts on Malinin’s disastrous skate.

“Something happened tonight and truthfully I can’t even express what it might be,” Chen said. “I can reflect back on my experience in 2018 when I went into the short program with a lot of pressure, a lot of concerns in my head, a lot of doubt. He went into his quad axel and singled that, and you could see after that, every single element he started holding back a bit more. ... It was just not his night.

“I remember when I went into my first jump and I fell the whole crowd goes, ‘Ooh,’ and that just hurts you to your gut. And you get up and mentally you have to refresh, you have to figure out what went wrong. ... The whole energy changes in the arena, and you can feel there’s tension now.”

Chen went on to give Malinin a few powerful words of encouragement that he can take with him in his young skating career.

“Ilia is absolutely in a position where he is young, he is still hungry, he still has so much potential. And certainly someone that we’ll continue talking about for the next many Olympic cycles. But tonight is a night where he’ll have to reflect and reevaluate where he was mentally, physically and try to identify how he can come into the next Olympics and have a different outcome.”

@nathanwchen reflects on Ilia Malinin’s rough night, sharing his own experience and the pressure he faced from 2018. pic.twitter.com/cU8rYXko8R

— Yahoo Sports (@YahooSports) February 14, 2026

Chen lived through an experience similar to Malinin’s at the 2018 PyeongChang Games, when he made his highly anticipated Olympic debut. Like Malinin, the then-18-year-old Chen was tabbed as the heavy favorite, but he suffered a fall on his opening quadruple lutz and committed a few other errors that caused him to tumble down the scoreboard. Chen ended up placing fifth in the singles competition.

Yet four years later, Chen skated his way to redemption in the 2022 Beijing Games, where he set a world record in the short program en route to clinching an individual gold medal.

If Chen’s career trajectory is any indication, Malinin should be just fine. Malinin’s post-skate hot mic moment aside, the 21-year-old will hopefully learn and grow from his disappointing outing in Milan and come back even stronger in four years.

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