Who is Ilia Malinin? The 'Quad God' who misses Olympic gold in a shocking upset

The U.S. figure skater GOAT, Ilia Malinin, just missed the coming gold in the men’s free skate competition on Friday, February 13, after stumbling twice at the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Just last week, he clinched the gold lead for Team USA in the team figure skating event on Sunday night, with a dazzling performance marked by a signature backflip that he touched down on with just one skate.

This stamps the first gold for Malinin at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, following a dramatic departure from Team U.S. at the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.

Let's dive deep to get to know who Ilia Malinin is, who was unfortunate to grab the gold yesterday at 2026 Milano Cortina.

Who is Ilia Malinin? Trailblazer American figure skater

Malinin has genes of figure skating in his blood.

He was born in Virginia in 2004 to the proud Russian-born Olympians Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov.

His parents had participated for Uzbekistan in the 1998 Winter Olympics held in Nagano, Japan and the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Ilia developed a passion for figure skating at just age 6.

Once he shared how he moved to skating instead of soccer in an interview with People Magazine, “I thought I was going to be a soccer player, but my parents didn’t have time to take me to soccer lessons, so skating kind of took over.”

Many greats of the sport have admired Malinin for his GOAT-level talent.

One of them is Scott Hamilton, the 1984 Olympic champion, who once told The New York Times he has never witnessed anything like Malinin.

“You’re like, ‘Whoa, what is this?’ Does these ninja flips and rotational things, things that didn’t exist before,” Hamilton said.

Praising Malinin’s natural talent, he added, “He’s so different than anything we’ve ever seen. It’s like he’s come from 50 years in the future to show us how far the sport has come.”

Despite a dramatic turn of events in 2022, when Team USA dropped him at 17 at that time and selected a 27-year-old Jason Brown instead.

At that time, Malinin had finished second at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

Malinin, since then, has not lost a national title. He has clinched gold at the last three Grand Prix Finals and claimed the past two world titles.

Heading into these Winter Games, Malinin has not been defeated in 14 full competitions, a period of more than two years.

Malinin added another feather in his cap by becoming the first person ever to land seven quadruple jumps last December at the Grand Prix Finals.

Feeling the heat this time at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, he could not make it to the podium despite a buzz as he was being considered the hot favorite.

Before the team competition, he told reporters, saying, “It’s a lot to handle—the pressure, all the attention, all the focus on you to become the Olympic gold hopeful.”

“A lot of the times, I’ll have bad days where I think about that, and it really shuts me down, and it really puts me in, you know, not the best moods.”