American figure skater Ilia Malinin fell twice during his final run Friday night and finished eighth in the final event of the competition.
The 21-year-old sensation, who arrived in Italy as the clear favorite for gold in this sport, suffered an unfortunate accident, as “overwhelmed by negative emotions” he fell during the quadruple Lutz, which prevented him from completing the next triple toe loop.
The two-time world champion, who nicknamed himself “Quad God” as a teenager, had a five-point lead before taking to the ice for the final race of the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
Malinin fell for the second time toward the end of his performance while attempting a quadruple Salchow-triple Axel combination. He was visibly shocked by his “worst” performance yet.
The American sensation finished 15th out of 24 competitors in the segment with a score of 156.33 in the free skate.
Malinin said: “I screwed up. Honestly, that’s the first thing that came to my mind. I felt like all the traumatic moments in my life started flooding my head.”
She continued, “I couldn’t stand it when too many negative thoughts flooded my mind,” adding, “It was definitely something I wasn’t expecting. I can’t go back and change it, even though I would love to.”
Kazakh Mikhail Shaidorov won the gold medal and Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama and Shun Sato won silver and bronze, respectively.
