Ilia Malinin soars into figure skating worlds unburdened by expectation

Christine Brennan, USA TODAYThu, March 26, 2026 at 10:40 PM UTC

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PRAGUE — When last we left our story, Ilia Malinin was standing on the Milan Olympic ice in utter disbelief, his face buried in his hands. The favorite of all sports favorites had fallen twice and otherwise stumbled across the ice in a shocking four-minute meltdown, not only losing the gold medal but dropping all the way to eighth place.

Move ahead 41 days and 550 miles to the northeast. Malinin was standing on the ice again, this time at the world championships. He had just finished his short program, his first competition since the Olympics, and a smile was exploding across his face. While this wasn’t the troublesome long program — that big hurdle comes Saturday — this was the first test of his post-Olympics life, and he passed it magnificently.

Performing with more fluidity and confidence than he showed at any moment in Milan, Malinin soared into first place with a 9.44-point lead, which is the largest men’s short program margin at the world championships since 2019. He received the highest score he has ever been given for a short program: 111.29 points. There were no falls, no stumbles, no mistakes. He nailed it all.

“One main thing I wanted to come out here was just enjoy the sport of figure skating,” he said. “I had no expectations coming in. I simply wanted to go and skate.”

Because Malinin has been away from the cameras and microphones for a month, it was inevitable that he would be asked this week to look back at what happened in Milan. Just as he answered every question so thoroughly and gracefully that night at the Olympics, he didn’t avoid any of them now.

“It was pretty difficult coming back from the Olympics,” he said. “It was really hard for a few days and thinking about it 24/7, I thought of so many different things that I could have done differently to get a different outcome but in the end, this outcome is what happened and I had to move on. Maybe in a different universe I would have won the Olympics and maybe decided to not do world championships but here I am.”

1 / 0Check out the action from the ISU Figure Skating World Championships

Amber Glenn of the US in action during women's short program at the ISU Figure Skating World Championships in Prague on March 25, 2026.

He explained his admirable demeanor in defeat this way:

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“A lot of times, I’ll try to find anything positive in whatever outcome or situation happens,” he said. “Also, realizing that it was done, there was nothing I could have done to change it. I don’t have a time machine to go back. Maybe in a few years we’ll have one, who knows? I just look at it, it’s done. I just have to move on and to keep going.”

His words were peppered with perspective. “There is no reason for me to go crazy for something like this because it’s sport, it’s what happens, anything can happen. All you have to do is just understand from that moment and take in everything you’ve learned and use it as information and motivation in the future.”

He also mentioned the word “expectations” several times across a few interviews on March 26. “For me it was hard to find that balance of really wanting to perform to the best of my ability but also enjoying what I love to do and not necessarily having expectations or having pressure on me.”

This 21-year-old who named himself the “Quad God” as a teenager is clearly working his way through what happened in Milan and trying to make sure it never happens again, starting right here, right now.

"Going on that ice, I had no expectations,” he said. "I really just wanted to embrace the environment and the experience of figure skating and that’s all I really thought about the whole program. … I skate better if I tell myself that the season will end in two days, so that’s what I’m going to do and really just enjoy what I do and what I love.”

Spoken like a young man who realizes that if this was the first day of the rest of his career, it was a very good way to start.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ilia Malinin's recovery from 2026 Winter Olympics meltdown begins

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