Ilia Malinin Back in Form for the Individual Short Program

(10 February 2026)  In the Men's short program, the "quad god" was back.  Prior to the individual event, Ilia Malinin skated twice in the Team competition, and frankly, it was not his best work.

As reported earlier by other outlets, Malinin did not want to skate the free in the Team competition and both he and his coaches made that clear.  But he was pressed to skate the free so that Team USA had a chance to win the Team gold.  As it turned out, this proved to be absolutely necessary, with Team USA winning the Team competition by only one point.

In the Team competition Malinin dumbed down his programs and basically phoned it in, doing just enough to get the job done, but scoring nearly 40 points below his personal best for total event points.  There was also speculation that he might be succumbing to first-Olympics nerves, as Nathan Chen did in 2018.  But here in the individual short program he was again the "quad god."  After the event, Malinin acknowledged that he indeed had experience a case of Olympic nerves and that it was good to have skated in the Team competition to work that out.

Malinin skated to a five-point lead in the short program, 10.67 points above his Team competition score, earning 108.16 points.  In both short programs he did not use the quad Axel.  In addition to triple Axel he completed quad flip and quad Lutz with triple toe loop.  In the Team short program his quad Lutz was called under rotated - though that call was demonstrably incorrect.  In the individual short all three just were called fully rotated.  Other points were left on the table, with flying sit and the step sequence missing level 4. The routine was a crowd favorite, with his signature backflip and other connecting movements.

Referring to the team event Malinin said, “I would want to call it Olympic pressure. Going out there the first time, hitting that Olympic ice and feeling the atmosphere, it was like … I didn't expect it to be so much. It took me a little while to understand what really happened. But now that I understand it, I took a different approach today. Really just take things nice and calm, nice and slow, just relaxed, and really just push the autopilot button and just let it cruise.” 

On being the gol meal favorite he commented,  “Being the favorite is one thing, but actually getting it done and doing it under pressure and really just having the skate of your life to earn that medal is another thing,” Malinin added. “I don't want to get too ahead of myself and say that it's guaranteed that I'm getting that gold medal, because of course I still have to put in that work for that long program. [I want to] really just take everything, give myself a nice process, a nice schedule and what I want to do and how to prepare myself the best for that free program. ”

Kagiyama started by cleanly landing quad toe loop with triple toe and quad Salchow.  But later in the program, for the triple Axel, he stumbled.   The leveled elements were all fours, and he even edged out Malinin in program component score by 0.76 points.  For the short he scored  103.07 points.  While currently close to Malinin, he does not have the repertoire of quads to overtake Malinin, if Malinin skates reasonably clean.  None of the men do.

"Honestly, short program scores don't mean much,” Kagiyama said. “In my case, no matter how high or low they are, they're not a reference at all for the free skate. So to begin with, I just tried to do everything I could at my best.

“I knew even before the results were announced how things would be judged, so I had made a solid plan for how to recover and step things up,” he continued. “Not everything went smoothly, but I've been able to stick to my own routine, so I feel that I really skated with 100% effort today."

France's Adam Siao Him Fa had a strong clean skate that was well presented to the elite of the audience.  His “Vitruvian Man” program, which included quad toe loop with triple toe loop, quad Salchow and triple Axel, scored a personal best of 102.55 points. 

“I had a long time to prepare and I have trained really hard,” Siao Him Fa said. “I’ve never trained so well before and I never was so ready for a competition. I skipped the European Championships because it was really necessary for me to have this real time of training to redevelop my physical and mental form and to recover.

“This performance today gives me a lot of confidence but the Free Skating is a new event. I will stay focused and prepare the best I can. Tomorrow, I start from zero.”

Italian Daniel Grassl was devotedly received by the home country audience. He landed quad Lutz with triple toe loop, quad loop, which receive a q-call, an triple Axel.  He finished in fourth with 93.46 points.

The 2025 World silver medalist, Mikhail Shaidorov (Kazakstan), skating to "Dune," ended in fifth place with 92.94 points.

American Andrew Torgashev had a clean skate that earned 88.94 points for an 8th place finish, while teammate Maxim Naumov scored 85.65 points with two minor errors to place 14th.