In the weeks and months after the Milan Cortina Olympic Games, Ilia Malinin, like the rest of his sport, couldn’t let go of his epic meltdown, the medal deciding free skate that saw Malinin, one of the biggest favorites of the 2026 Games, slip from first to eighth overall in the most stunning collapse in figure skating history.
“I used to look back at it a few months and days after it happened, what could I have done different?” Malinin said. “But really, you can’t be stuck in the past trying to think about it. All you have to do is learn from it and keep going, and so that’s what I did.”
Malinin, the three-time World champion, arrives at Saturday’s Stars On Ice performance at the Honda Center still processing those lessons, questioning whether he was pressured to skate too many rounds in Milan Cortina, weighing whether to take a break from competitive skating and determined not to be defined by the Milan debacle but rather by the entirety of a career that, according to Olympic champion Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan, has established Malinin as “the best skater in history.”
Malinin said in a recent interview that he will decide after the completion of the Stars On Ice tour next month whether to attempt to win a fourth consecutive World title or take the 2026-27 season off from competitions. Either way, Malinin, 21, said he remains committed to competing in multiple Olympic Games.
“We’ll see how things play out,” he said. “I’m still not sure what I’m going to do next year. I think it’s more of now get to the shows and see how I feel and after that we’ll see if I continue to skate or take a year off. I still haven’t had anything set in stone yet. It just depends on how everything is going to look.”
He expects to have a clearer picture of his next steps after taking a physical and emotional break from training this summer.
“Because I think it’s a pretty obvious reasoning for having the last few years be so stressful, having so much attention and so much pressure and expectations from everyone and really sometimes not having the best people around me,” Malinin said. “So it’s really just up to having myself to chill off, cool out and relax and find a new strategy to prepare myself for these next years.”
Malinin declined to be more specific when pressed to elaborate on who he was referring to, but offered some pretty clear hints.
“The media in general,” he said. “But a bigger one is lot of federations, organizations, sometimes they don’t really understand what’s best for the athletes. And that’s something I’ve really noticed and usually they try to take all advantage of that as opposed to listening to what the athletes need and then benefiting the athletes instead of really just forcing them …”
He didn’t finish his answer. Malinin was asked if he was referring to U.S. Figure Skating, the sport’s national governing body, and/or the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee?
“Just in general,” he said.
Much of the post-Milan analysis revolved around U.S. Figure Skating’s decision to have Malinin skate in both rounds of the Olympic team competition, meaning the men’s individual competition’s deciding free skate was his fourth competition in seven days. The U.S. won the team competition gold medal on the Games’ opening weekend.
Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama, the Olympic silver medalist, has maintained Malinin was overextended in Milan Cortina.
“As everyone knows,” Kagiyama said, “he was part of the team’s program, as well as (the) singles, and he has done four very difficult programs.”
Malinin, in the interview, was asked if he should have skipped one of the rounds of the team competition.
“That was something I really thought about and kind of assumed that would have been the right decision because then I would have (set) myself up better,” he said. “But of course I think everything happens for a reason, so that is something that I have to keep in mind, this is part of God’s plan for me.
“The amount of attention that was on me, the amount of pressure, the expectations. The people surrounding me were not the best people at the time. So there’s a few things that definitely went wrong in that situation that I’ll be able to address in the future.
“It’s really not over. One bad performance doesn’t make you who you are. It doesn’t change what you’ve already accomplished.
“I might not be an individual Olympic champion but I still have an Olympic gold medal and that’s something I’m really proud of.”
Malinin rebounded to win Worlds in March, becoming only the sixth American man in the event’s 140-year history to win three consecutive World titles. He credited the unwavering support of his fans for keeping him positive heading into Worlds.
“Such an awesome feeling just getting the fans to show me their love and support, especially after everything that happened in Milan,” he said. “Everyone tried to bring me down. It was so crazy, but the fans were there to support me and keep me up and believe in me, and that helped me get through that hard time right after, and I seemed to come up with a new strategy and mindset going into Worlds.”
His plans and mindset will continue to evolve, Malinin said, as he lays out a road map to the 2030 Olympic Games in France and perhaps even the 2034 Games in Salt Lake City.
“Absolutely that’s part of it,” he said “and that’s part of what I want to do, take some time off and give myself the realization that I don’t need to make it as big as it really is and really listen to myself more, being more in line what my goals are, what my expectations are and not really focus on any specific people or person around me.”