Ilia Malinin handled his post-disaster interviews with grace after what was likely one of the worst figure skating performances of his life.
From a gold medal within reach to off the podium entirely, the United States figure skating superstar won’t want to re-live his performance from Friday’s men’s free skate final.
But there was one moment that has gone viral of Malinin that was less than perfect composure.
This isn’t to blame him at all, of course. It’s hard to imagine how frustrated he must’ve been.
But a hot mic on the NBC broadcast caught Malinin as he waited for his score saying this: “They should have sent me to Beijing and I wouldn’t have skated like this,” then adding, “It’s not easy.”
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Here’s the clip, with a Portuguese caption but the video playing in the English-language broadcast. Almost every version of this clip has been scrubbed from social media:
A NBC pegou uma fala do Malinin após seu programa livre. Ele diz: “eles (federação) deveriam ter me mandado pra Pequim (2022) e eu não teria patinado assim”. Ainda completa com um “não é fácil”. Na época ele era o vice campeão nacional e seria campeão mundial júnior meses depois. pic.twitter.com/v72il97deN
— Sergio Arenillas (@sergeta) February 15, 2026
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Malinin is referring to the Winter Olympics in 2022, which were in Beijing.
At the time, he was the national runner-up, so he had a case to be chosen for the team.
He wasn’t, which meant that even though he was the favorite to win this competition in Italy, he was also a first-time Olympian. It’s an entirely different stage than anything else.
Is that fully to blame for Malinin’s performance? We’ll never know for sure.
But it’s fair to wonder how things might’ve been different if he was already a veteran of the Olympics, rather than a rookie.
