What we covered here
• ‘Quad God’ does not medal: USA’s Ilia Malinin said he “blew it” after he placed a shocking eighth in the men’s figure skating final. He fell twice during the routine. Mikhail Shaidorov won gold in a massive and meaningful victory for Kazakhstan.
• Ukrainian’s appeal dismissed: Skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych will remain disqualified from the Games for defying IOC guidelines banning his helmet featuring images of athletes killed during the war in Ukraine, the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled.
• Ice dance controversy: There are questions around a French duo winning the ice dancing event after a French judge’s marks swayed the result, knocking Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates to silver.
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Catch up on another chaotic day in the Olympics
On a day full of Olympic action and storylines, it’ll be hard to focus on anything but the stunning men’s figure skating competition.
Olympic favorite Ilia Malinin said he “blew it” after he placed a shocking eighth in the men’s figure skating final. He fell twice during the routine, and described a flood of “traumatic moments” rushing through his head before he began. Mikhail Shaidorov won gold in a massive and meaningful victory for Kazakhstan.
Here are other medal moments from today:
USA’s hockey dominance: Team USA outshot Italy by an astonishing 51-6 margin in the game, and will now advance to the semifinals in the quest for a third Olympic gold medal. The game ended 6-0.
Snowboarding close calls: Australia’s Josie Baff claimed gold in women’s snowboard cross by a very narrow margin. Japan’s Yuto Totsuka took gold in the men’s snowboard halfpipe, with Australian snowboarding legend Scotty James in second after he fell at the last moment.
Czech Republic’s stunning gold: Nineteen-year-old Metodej Jilek claimed gold in the men’s 10,000m speed skating.
Norway’s skiing gold: Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo won an astonishing third gold medal of the Games after winning the 10km cross-country skiing interval start.
Men’s biathlon drama: Norway’s Sturla Holm Laegreid, who confessed on live post-race TV to cheating on his girlfriend, won his second bronze of the Games in the men’s biathlon 10km sprint.
In other news:
Ukrainian’s appeal dismissed: Skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych will remain disqualified from the Games for defying IOC guidelines banning his helmet featuring images of athletes killed during the war in Ukraine, the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled.
Ice dance controversy: There are questions around a French duo winning the ice dancing event after a French judge’s marks swayed the result, knocking Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates to silver.
CNN’s Aditi Sangal, Kevin Dotson, Frank Nunns O’Connell contributed to this report.
Christine Brennan on Malinin: "As big an upset in sports as we've probably ever seen"
Sports analyst Christine Brennan told CNN World Sport’s Patrick Snell that Ilia Malinin’s failure to medal in the men’s single free skate event was “as big an upset in sports as we’ve probably ever seen.”
The 21-year-old American, nicknamed the “Quad God,” came into Friday’s competition as the favorite and delivered a shocking performance. It’s the first time he’s faced defeat since 2023.
“This is probably the worst meltdown in figure skating history, certainly Olympic history, by a favorite,” Brennan said from Milan, Italy.
Brennan described Malinin as someone who is “so confident, so calm, so delightful, delightfully sure of himelf.”
“I’ve never seen anything quite like this in figure skating,” Brennan added.
In pictures: Ilia Malinin falters in free skate
It was heartbreak for US figure skating star Ilia Malinin on Friday, as a couple of falls and some other uncharacteristic mistakes marred his free skate and kept him off the podium.
The “Quad God” came into Friday’s competition as the favorite, but he left the ice with disappointment written all over his face.
"I just did not handle it": Ilia Malinin says negative thoughts flooded his head before performance
Team USA’s Ilia Malinin, fresh out of his Olympic medal loss, says he is still processing what happened moments ago on the ice in Milan.
He said he started the day feeling good and “solid,” thinking he just needed to “go out there and trust the process that I’ve been doing with every competition.”
“But of course it’s not like any other competition. It’s the Olympics,” he told reporters.
When he struck his starting pose, he said negative thoughts and “traumatic moments of my life” rushed into his head.
“I just did not handle it,” he said. “Being the Olympic gold hopeful is really just a lot to deal with, especially for my age.”
Now, he said he’ll regroup and figure out next steps.
Why Ilia Malinin’s mistakes are so shocking
Ilia Malinin seemed untouchable heading into the Olympics. The two-time and reigning world champion is the only human who can land the most difficult jump in figure skating and usually blows the competition out of the water by astronomical margins.
And he had the confidence to back up the gold-medal expectations. He’s walked around backstage in a gold-lettered shirt that reads “QUAD GOD” – a title he gave himself as he started to master quadruple jumps years ago.
But there were signs early in these Olympics that the Quad God was actually human.
He stepped out of a triple Axel – an easier jump than his signature quad Axel – during the short program of the team competition, falling to second place behind Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama. But he rallied in the free skate and won gold with Team USA in an epic nailbiter.
This isn’t the first time a heavy favorite for the gold collapsed – quite literally – under Olympic pressure. “Quad King” Nathan Chen did the same thing at the 2018 Olympics – but he returned to the Olympics in 2022 and captured the gold medal.
USA women headed to ice hockey semifinals after dominant win
After piling up a 6-0 lead through two periods, the US women’s hockey team seemed content to just see the game out in the final period against host nation Italy, going on to win by the same margin.
Friday’s result was the most lopsided of these Olympics for the American women, who have now outscored their opponents 26-1 through five games in the tournament, with the last four wins coming by shutout.
Team USA outshot Italy by an astonishing 51-6 margin in the game, and will now advance to the semifinals in the quest for a third Olympic gold medal.
Team USA will discover its semifinal opponent after Saturday’s quarterfinal games.
Sweden defeated the Czech Republic 2-0 earlier on Friday to advance to the semis.
On Saturday, Canada will face Germany and Finland will play Switzerland. The four semifinalists will be reseeded after the quarterfinal games are complete.
Ilia Malinin's falls are reminiscent of Nathan Chen's disappointing Olympic finish in 2018
Ilia Malinin’s unexpected bump off the podium feels like 2018 Nathen Chen all over again.
The then 18-year-old skating star was predicted to take home the gold in PyeongChang, but after falling multiple times he landed fifth in the individual competition.
It was a disappointing finish, but one that he erased with a gold medal win in Beijing four years later.
Ilia Malinin says the Olympic stage was simply too much
The Olympics are just different and Ilia Malinin found that out the hard way on Friday.
“The pressure of the Olympics really gets you. People say that there’s an Olympic curse, that the Olympic gold medal favorite is always going to skate bad at the Olympics. So that’s what happens,” he said after his shocking performance that left the gold-medal favorite in eighth place.
“The pressure is unreal. It’s really not easy, but I’m still proud of being able to get to the finish.
“It’s almost like I wasn’t aware of where I was in the program. Usually, I have more time and more feeling of how it is, but this time, it all went by so fast, and I really didn’t have time to make those changes or make that process different.”
It’ll take four years for the American to have another chance like this. That feeling of a dream slipping away felt all too real in the moment, he said.
“Coming into the free program, I was really confident, just really feeling good about it - and then it’s like it’s right there, and it just left your hands,” he said.
From a shopping mall rink to a massive win for Kazakhstan
Mikhail Shaidorov’s victory is HUGE – especially because Kazakhstan (and the global skating community) has been devastated since the gruesome killing of the country’s most famous skater, Denis Ten.
I cannot overstate what Denis Ten’s murder did to the community and what Shaidorov’s victory means.
Shaidorov grew up idolizing Ten and credited him for paving the way for young skaters in Kazakhstan – a country with limited resources for figure skating.
Shaidorov and Ten actually learned to skate on the same humble rink – in the middle of a shopping mall.
Malinin attributes mistakes to mental blocks
In an interview with NBC after his performance, Ilia Malinin said he was not expecting to make so many mistakes, and “maybe I was too confident it was going to go well.”
He said the blocks were mental.
“Finally experiencing that Olympic atmosphere, it’s crazy,” Malinin said. “It’s not like any other competition.”
Malinin said he is grateful to have gotten this far, but “of course that is not the skate that I wanted.”
He said he will need time to process what exactly went wrong.
The crowd was momentarily stunned into silence after Ilia Malinin's score was revealed
To say people inside the arena are surprised would be the biggest understatement of the Winter Olympics.
Fans, journalists, skaters and coaches are all genuinely dumbfounded by that result. Perhaps most shocked of all, though, is Ilia Malinin himself who couldn’t really hide his disappointment.
As soon as he finished his routine, his head sunk into his hands. He didn’t really know what to do, and neither did anyone else.
Those falls were so costly, and no matter how much the crowd cheered for him, he never really recovered. It’s a memorable night, but for all the wrong reasons if you’re Malinin.
I genuinely had to double-check that I saw the 8th place finish correctly.
"I blew it": What went awry during Ilia Malinin’s free skate
An avalanche of uncharacteristic mistakes knocked Ilia Malinin off of the podium and into eighth place.
He fell on a quad Lutz. His quad Salchow turned into a double. And he popped the highly anticipated quad Axel midair.
Malinin never fully recovered and looked as shocked as the spectators when he got off the ice.
“I can’t process what just happened,” he told NBC’s Andrea Joyce. “I blew it.”
When asked whether the mistakes were the result of physical or mental blocks, “I think it was definitely mental,” Malinin said.
Ilia Malinin misses out on a medal in the men’s single skating event
Team USA’s Ilia Malinin has missed out on gold in the men’s single skating event. He ends up without a medal.
A shocking performance that included two falls and some technical gaffes sees Malinin fall all the way to eighth place, a stunning development that has left him in tears. It’s the first time he’s faced defeat since 2023.
Malinin scored 264.49, putting him in eighth place. That means Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov wins gold in men’s single free skate event, with Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama and Shun Sato in second and third.
Ilia Malinin takes to the stage for his highly anticipated routine
Ilia Malinin is out on the ice as the stadium holds its breath. So much is expected of the 21-year-old and now is time for him to deliver.
He is looking very calm.
USA runs up the score as the coaches exchange words late in the period
The USA women continues to score, even as head coach John Wroblewski is growing frustrated at a perceived lack of penalty calls from the referees.
The Americans added a sixth goal with a pinpoint accurate passing from Taylor Heise and Caroline Harvey to set up Hannah Bilka for the score from point blank range.
As the second period draws to an end, Wroblewski was yelling back and forth at Italy coach Eric Bouchard about the physical play, with the NBC Sports commentators saying they counted at least four plays that could have been called penalties against Italy.
The Americans will take a 6-0 lead to the final period, and this is now the highest scoring game of the tournament for Team USA.
USA tallies another goal as the game turns more physical
After the flurry of USA goals to start the second period, the Italian team has noticeably turned up the physicality in this quarterfinal ice hockey match-up.
American assistant captain Alex Carpenter came up hobbling after she had her legs taken out by Italy’s Anna Caumo. There was no penalty called on the play, and Carpenter slammed her stick on the boards as she limped off the ice.
With the hitting really starting to pick up, USA’s Rory Guilday picked up a two-minute penalty for boarding.
Playing short-handed didn’t slow down the Americans as Britta Curl found the net to make the score 5-0 in favor of the US.
USA scores twice to take firm control in the women's ice hockey quarterfinal
The USA has added another goal, and once again, it’s Kendall Coyne providing the heroics just a few minutes after her last goal.
This time it was snappy US passing that set Coyne up for the tally.
And before I could even finish this update, the Americans scored again, less than 30 seconds later.
This goal came courtesy of Laila Edwards coming out of an Italian timeout aimed at stopping the American momentum. It’s safe to say that the strategy didn’t work.
Team USA leads 4-0.
Ilia Malinin set to perform to his own voice
The music to which skaters perform goes a huge way to creating a brilliant atmosphere inside the arena and once again, Ilia Malinin has taken things to another level.
He’s expected to perform his free skate to the sound of his own voice set to dramatic music, in a piece titled, “A Voice.”
It may not be to everyone’s liking but it’s certainly as unique as you can get.
We now have just four more skaters before it’s his turn.
What is a quad Axel and why is it so insane?
When self-titled “Quad God” Ilia Malinin takes the ice, viewers are expecting him to throw a quadruple Axel – a jump that no other human being can do.
An Axel jump – named after its inventor, Axel Paulsen – is the most difficult type of jump in figure skating. You launch yourself into the air by stepping forward on one skate and hurling your other leg forward into an upward, spinning movement.
Here’s the insane part: It’s not just the takeoff that’s so difficult. Axel jumps start by skating forward on one leg and end going backward on the other leg. That means skaters have to complete an extra half turn in the air. So a triple Axel is 3.5 revolutions, and a quad Axel is a mind-boggling 4.5 revolutions in one jump.
