MILAN — Everything about Ilia Malinin’s Olympic debut was off Saturday night. From the ice to the interviews in the mixed zone, he didn’t quite seem to be himself.
What began as an uncharacteristically shaky, second-place performance in the men’s short program of the team figure skating competition ended with a bizarre comment to journalists in which he said he came into the team competition “with only 50% of my full potential.”
“So that’s what I felt like here today, that’s the way I pace myself, leading up to the individual (men’s) event,” he added.
An hour later, Ari Zakarian, Malinin’s agent, exclusively told USA TODAY Sports that Malinin didn’t mean to infer that he was giving only 50% of his energy to the team event.
“He didn’t mean it the way it sounded,” Zakarian said. “He is pacing himself because of the few days ahead of him, but he always gives 100%. This is a chess game, the team competition and then the men’s event. You have to be smart and be prepared for a long week.”
Malinin will also skate the men’s long program for the United States Sunday on the final night of the team competition, as first reported by USA TODAY Sports. The two-time world champion and four-time national champion has far more experience on the international stage than either of the other two men on the U.S. team, Andrew Torgashev or Max Naumov. The United States is ahead of second-place Japan by five points with three long programs in pairs, women and men yet to come, but that margin is expected to tighten.
Malinin then has a quick turnaround to the more important men’s individual event Tuesday and Friday. He is the strong gold medal favorite in that event.
However, Malinin, the 21-year-old self-proclaimed “Quad God,” lost to Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama by a significant amount in the team men’s event Saturday: 108.67 points for Kagiyama to 98 for Malinin. Kagiyama, 22, won the silver medal in the men’s individual event at the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Said Malinin of the evening’s developments: “Of course that wasn’t the perfect, ideal, 100 percent skate that I would’ve wanted to have, but for the standard I set myself today, I think I achieved that.”
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