Malinin’s performance in the free skate bore an eerie resemblance to Chen in the 2018 Pyeongchang Games.
WASHINGTON — Nathan Chen weighed in on Ilia Malinin’s performance in the free skate, a moment that bore an eerie resemblance to the 2018 Pyeongchang Games for the figure skater.
Chen, who is not competing in the 2026 Winter Olympics, discussed what the pressure feels like and offered advice for Malinin. Malinin, the 21-year-old figure skater, was the overwhelming favorite to win gold.
During a disastrous free skate event Friday, Malinin fell twice amid a calamitous program that he seemingly had perfected over the past year, sending him tumbling from first place all the way off the podium and allowing Mikhail Shaidorov to claim gold instead.
While speaking with Yahoo Sports, Chen shared what it’s like to be in Malinin’s shoes right now.
“I can reflect on my experience in 2018, I went into the short program with a lot of pressure, a lot of concern, a lot of doubt,” he said. “(Malinin) went into his quad axle and singled that and you could see that after that, every single element… he started holding back a little bit more and a little bit more. By the end of it, it just was not his night.”
“One of the hardest parts about performing for a huge sold-out crowd is that you really can viscerally feel the reaction from the crowd,” he said. “I remember when I went on my first jump, and I fell, the whole crowd goes ‘oooh.’ And that just hurts your gut, and you get up, and mentally you have to refresh, you have to figure out what went wrong and how can I regroup for the next element.”
Chen — who, like Malinin, was trained by Hall of Fame coach Rafael Arutyunyan — was considered the favorite, along with Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu, to stand atop the podium in South Korea. Instead, Chen fell once during his short program and struggled through the rest of it, leaving him so far behind that not even his winning free skate could earn him a medal.
One month later, he won his first world title. Four years later, Chen won Olympic gold in Beijing.
“The whole energy changes in the arena, and you can feel there’s tension now. Everyone’s kind of lifted into their seats, and you feel that as a skater. You’re trying to calm yourself back down and resettle, but every mistake that you do compounds and compounds.”
“I can’t express how challenging that situation was,” he said.
Chen also shared some advice for Malinin on what’s next.
“Ilia is absolutely in a position where he is young, he is still hungry, he still has so much potential and certainly (is) someone that we’ll continue talking about for the next many Olympic cycles,” Chen added. “But tonight is a night where he’ll have to reflect and reevaluate where he was mentally, physically and try to identify how he can come into the next Olympics and have a different outcome.”
The end of one disastrous free skate will hardly be the end for Malinin, though. He’s still the reigning world champion, the best figure skater of his generation, and again the overwhelming favorite to win Olympic gold four years from now in France.
“I can’t go back and change it, even though I would love to,” Malinin said, candidly after his performance. “You have to take what happened or what you’ve learned from this and really just change or decide what you want to do for the future, and how to approach things.”
Why is Nathan Chen not at the Winter Olympics?
The decorated figure skater has previously confirmed he will not defend his title in the upcoming Winter Games in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. Chen, 26, told the Los Angeles Times in August 2025 that he won’t be at the upcoming Games as he will embark on a new career in medicine.
“I just want to open doors to kind of see what’s the best sort of approach for me,” Chen told The Times. “And frankly, at this point in time in my life, I’ve already accomplished enough in skating that I’m quite satisfied with my career.”
The figure skater was one of the breakout stars of the 2022 Winter Olympics, landing five clean quadruple jumps to win gold in the men’s singles figure skating event. His run at the Beijing Games set records as he became the first singles skater in Olympic history to win two gold medals in the same Games after helping the U.S. win in the team competition.
Since that run, Chen has graduated from Yale and begun applying to medical schools around the country.
The Olympic figure skater said he’ll attend “whichever medical school wants him” and that taking the medical college admissions test was more nerve-racking than competing at the Winter Games.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.