2026 Olympics: Men's Free Skate

[el henry]

So then, why did Polina's junior grand prix experience hold some weight and Ilia's didn't? That's my question. That's what I mean by unfair. They both won both of their assignments.

Because as I understand it, the guidelines were far more formalized and set down in advance in 2022 than they were in 2014. Possibly as a result of Ross Miner, more than Polina.

 

[TallyT]

I'm baffled at the idea somebody should be sent to Olympic Games over somebody other deserving for no other reason but to lessen the chance he doesn't melt down in Olympic free skate 4 years from now.

Yes, I am scratching my head trying to understand that one too.

By the way, does anyone know where I could find videos on Jun's and Shun's skates? I really am avoiding the splatfesters but I was asleep and would like to see them (I must say, waking up yesterday to the unholy meltdown everywhere over all the meltdowning, and the results, was a... thing)

 

[Mista Ekko]

I'm baffled at the idea somebody should be sent to Olympic Games over somebody other deserving for no other reason but to lessen the chance he doesn't melt down in Olympic free skate 4 years from now.

That's oversimplifying it.

Ilia came to Nationals and got the Silver with 2 Quads in the SP and 4 in the FS, he also showcased inventive spinning and apparent showmanship, It was pretty obvious he's a good future investment, and it was a legitimate assumption that he could compete better and score better then Zhou and Brown. I don't know that the discussion about his Olympic prospects at the time should've been "baffling", (especially when even back then people were mentioning Nathan Chen's first Olympic experience)

In the past two or three Olympic Cycles the word "deserving" has been given specific criteria by some federations, and it's fair for people to disagree with those choices sometimes when things happen unexpectedly and a little differently.

 

[skatingfan4ever]

Four years is a long time in figure skating. I'm sure there is US teenager now who will be Olympic first-timer in 2030.

Case in point: Andrew Torgashev was so injured four years ago that he was not able to even skate at all. He spent two full seasons off the ice. In the summer of 2022, he was able to get back on the ice, but he had to rebuild his skating from square one. Going into 2023 Nationals (which it was not a certainty that he would qualify for, by the way), he had a "see how it goes" mentality and his goal was top 10. He got 3rd and went to his first senior Worlds and things progressed from there, although it's still had its ups and downs. Andrew Torgashev was not on anyone's 2026 Olympics radar four years ago, not even in his own mind. And yet, here we are in 2026 and he had the most even-keeled competition of the three American men.

 

[Blades of Passion]

And what can cause a skater with presumably perfect technique with deep, controlled edges to stumble and fall on such a regular basis? Logic dictates that he under-rotates.

That's not what logic dictates at all.

People fall on jumps because they are hard to do. The human sensory system isn't built to rotate this fast and land on a thin piece of metal.

He could have skated senior and accumulated senior points and accumulated senior minimum. He, or his team, chose not to.

No he couldn't have just done that. You need to have a certain world ranking to get chosen for Senior grand prix events. He had to do the Junior grand prix circuit...and he won every Junior event he entered that year.

Your assertion that it "doesn't matter" about someone being denied experience is foolish. Obviously it's perfectly possible for someone to do amazing at their first Olympics, but naturally someone will have a better chance at succeeding in a given task if they've done it before. People improve via experience.

I'm baffled at the idea somebody should be sent to Olympic Games for no other reason but to lessen the chance he doesn't melt down in Olympic free skate 4 years from now.

This is a massive distortion of the discussion.

Ilia deserved to go in 2022 because he was better than Jason. Outscored him by a mile. The fact that he had a bigger competitive career ahead of him than Jason simply made it even more of the logical choice that he should've been selected. There was zero benefit in selecting Jason for those Olympics, aside from his fans being happy about him getting to go (the fans who didn't care about fairness, that is).

 

[Magill]

Not sure I agree, The Criteria for 2022 was biased against someone like Malinin as written because he didn't have the opportunities other top skaters had to gain criteria due to his age and the set up to the Olympics being during Covid, there was no "run-around", there were legitimate conversations about who to send.

As to the second point, We can't really say for sure if it has anything to do with his performance here but it's a fair speculation due to what a lot of other athletes are saying about the Olympic experience who went through something like this, Plus if we can hear him saying that's how he feels (wether it's a cool thing for him to say or not) why not respect that that's his experience?

It's not a feeling. Neither it is his "experience". It is an opinion attributing responsibility for yesterday's failure to external factors, i.e. an USFS decision from 4 years ago, that's all.

BTW someone posted a table with examples of first Olympians achievements and age through the years.

https://x.com/MartinaFrammart/status/2022731575109263739

 

[saine]

By the way, does anyone know where I could find videos on Jun's and Shun's skates? I really am avoiding the splatfesters but I was asleep and would like to see them (I must say, waking up yesterday to the unholy meltdown everywhere over all the meltdowning, and the results, was a... thing)

Shun - https://v.redd.it/15qjn0rn7cjg1
Jun - https://v.redd.it/bqjkg3o1hcjg1

 

[Mista Ekko]

BTW someone posted a table with examples of first Olympians achievements and age through the years.

https://x.com/MartinaFrammart/status/2022731575109263739

Most people only ever go to one or two Olympics, So naturally a lot of Medal winning examples will be from people who are in their first Olympics. The point with Ilia is if you know you have a mental issue with being the "Headlining Act" of a major international event ( the vast majority of this list were not that ) then you have a better sense of how to approach that situation to better be successful.

So if we're all back on forth on him saying something along the lines of - if he had the Beijing experience this would have unfolded differently - then maybe he's correct in that assesment, or maybe not.

Also, don't you find that teens do better with Olympic pressure on their first Olympics?
I don't have stats, I just always had that feeling, Especially in the Womens event.

 

[museksk8r]

Ilia deserved to go in 2022 because he was better than Jason. Outscored him by a mile. The fact that he had a bigger competitive career ahead of him than Jason simply made it even more of the logical choice that he should've been selected. There was zero benefit in selecting Jason for those Olympics, aside from his fans being happy about him getting to go (the fans who didn't care about fairness, that is).

Fairness is applying the Olympic selection criteria in place at the time, which is what the USFSA did in 2022. Vincent and Jason had the body of work (both medaled at both of their senior GP assignments; Vincent 1 gold & 1 silver; Jason 1 silver & 1 bronze and both had won their challenger events), high scoring potential, and senior experience (top 10 history at senior worlds). The team isn’t decided only by skates at Nationals and every athlete is aware of the criteria. Malinin would have rightfully been buried in PCS at the 2022 Olympics; his basic skating, choreography and packaging was hideous back then. I don’t believe he would have been top 5 there. No way was he going to beat Chen, Kagiyama, Uno, Hanyu, and Cha. I will say in Ilia’s defense that it’s a real shame he didn’t get to skate in the absence of Vincent Zhou in the men’s individual event since Zhou ended up having to withdraw due to COVID.

Malinin scored 263.79 and finished 9th at 2022 Senior Worlds. Brown scored 281.24 and finished 6th at the 2022 Olympics. So, what were you saying about Ilia being better than Jason in 2022 and outscoring him by a mile again? The international scores and placements in 2022 tell a very different story.

 

[Magill]

Most people only ever go to one or two Olympics, So naturally a lot of Medal winning examples will be from people who are on their first Olympics. The point with Ilia is if you know you have a mental issue with being the "Headlining Act" of a major international event ( the vast majority of this list were not that ) then you have a better sense of how to approach that situation to better be successful.

So if we're all back on forth on him saying something along the lines of - if he had the Beijing experience this would have unfolded differently - then maybe he's correct in that assesment.

Or maybe he's just shifting responsibility which is a known and researched psychological mechanism?
Who knows, who can tell?

I don't think he has a "mental issue with being the Headlining Act", but if he did he should have toned down his own PR efforts. It is not that there was so much hype without conscious and deliberate actions from his own PR team. So, again, it was his own team's responsibility.
And BTW how would anyone know in 2022 who would be heading into 2026 Olympics as a favourite? He was a talented youngster then without necessary Olympic minima and having placed 3rd at a JGP this season.

 

[TallyT]

Shun - https://v.redd.it/15qjn0rn7cjg1
Jun - https://v.redd.it/bqjkg3o1hcjg1

Thank you so much! I am busily downloading, I always try to save these days...

 

[Mista Ekko]

I don't think he has a "mental issue with being the Headlining Act", but if he did he should have toned down his own PR efforts. It is not that there was so much hype without conscious and deliberate actions from his own PR team. So, again, it was his own team's responsibility.

That's the whole point. He's never faced this type of pressure to know that maybe he should tone down PR,
once he did, they literally took him out of the training arena to train in a secret location and flew in Raphael try and
help sort him out.

This is where the thought that the lack of this specific experience sabotaged him stems from.
Not claiming that's the nail on the head, just that it's a legitimate thought.

Hell, maybe he did it to himself...

 

[Magill]

That's the whole point. He's never faced this type of pressure to know that maybe he should tone down PR,
once he did, they literally took him out of the training arena to train in a secret location and flew in Raphael try and
help sort him out.

This is where the thought that the lack of this specific experience sabotaged him stems from.
Not claiming that's the nail on the head, just that it's a legitimate thought.

You know why they flew Raf in and changed the training location? I don't. It's all suppositions and assumptions from his fans, not facts.

The fact is he created all this pressure himself for reasons rooted in his ego, nothing less, and got burnt. Beijing assignments have nothing to do with it.
Besides, I would not have traded seeing Schindler and Sinnermann in Beijing for anything Ilia Malinin could have shown then or now. Sorry, guys.

 

[Blades of Passion]

It's not a feeling. Neither it is his "experience". It is an opinion attributing responsibility for yesterday's failure to external factors, i.e. an USFS decision from 4 years ago, that's all.

That exactly is a feeling, based on his direct personal experience.

"External factors" constantly have an influence on how people react and perform in life. It's my feeling that being physically and emotionally abused by my parents had a drastic negative impact on my life. Can I say for certain that many things in my life would've been better had I not dealt with that? I suppose not. But I have a damn strong feeling about it.

BTW someone posted a table with examples of first Olympians achievements and age through the years.

Interesting thing about that table:

Not a single person who went into their first Olympics as a 2-time reigning World Champion was able to win.

Ilia had a unique amount of pressure on him.

Fairness is applying the Olympic selection criteria in place at the time, which is what the USFSA did in 2022. Vincent and Jason had the body of work, high scoring potential, and senior experience (top 10 history at senior worlds).

Jason did not have as high of a scoring potential. Ilia's 2022 Nationals was a higher score than anything Jason ever did.

Fairness is about objective reasoning. Not bad rules on paper. Regardless, the Olympic selection criteria absolutely did not state that Jason needed to be selected, nor that he was the best choice. It was simply a committee decision and they went with his "senior experience" instead of Ilia's higher scoring potential and better placement at Nationals.

Malinin scored 263.79 and finished 9th at 2022 Senior Worlds.

So? Nobody can say how he would have fared at the Olympics, earlier in the year. There's also the argument that if he felt he had the full support of his federation, and the experience of the Olympics, then he would've performed better at those Worlds. As it stands, he already scored higher in the SP than Jason did.

 

[Mista Ekko]

I would not have traded seeing Schindler and Sinnermann in Beijing for anything Ilia Malinin could have shown then or now. Sorry, guys.

No reason to be sorry over a personal preference

 

[TallyT]

Aaaaaand on another even more important (well, important to me) note... I really liked Mikhail's costume except for the fact that the illusion at the neck did not match his skin, other than that it was great and moved wonderfully. Jun, well he will wear those flowy blouses and this one was rather lovely - no one else could look as good in it as he did, he really is the best looking skater at the minute. Ilia's was more than a tad IAmTheKingofFantasyLand (which was a vast improvement on the short) and Yuma and Shun were... somewhat staid for the Japanese. And Kevin was the Kevin he's Kevin'd all year (I went over to getty images and their collection for the fs is hysterical, the only thing there are more photos of than Ilia falling is Kevin's chest. I am not joking.).

 

[anonymoose_au]

Yes, the men were quite well dressed in this competition - although I haven't watched everyone yet...

(I went over to getty images and their collection for the fs is hysterical, the only thing there are more photos of than Ilia falling is Kevin's chest. I am not joking.)

LOL that's hilarious! I do like Kevin's costume, the red lower arms and gloves really pop especially when he does that clock-like movement.

Petr's costumes were also really classy, I especially liked his FS one, he looked very elegant indeed!

Donovan's costumes were fabulous as always

 

[museksk8r]

Jason did not have as high of a scoring potential. Ilia's 2022 Nationals was a higher score than anything Jason ever did.

You absolutely cannot use inflated Nationals scores as a barometer of how skaters are going to be scored internationally, especially not a skater coming out of juniors with absolutely no senior international experience. You must know this!

 

[TallyT]

The fact is he created all this pressure himself for reasons rooted in his ego, nothing less, and got burnt. Beijing assignments have nothing to do with it.

According to the Atlantic, he simply begged to be slapped in the face with the fat fist of fate... “I broke physics,” the 21-year-old Olympian known for his quad axel jumps said recently. “Now I think physics doesn’t apply to me.” (I saw it on a tweet that was celebrating... well, Mikhail.)

And now he knows better, fate will see where it leads.

 

[cruzceleste]

Link, please.
Then, can we blame gravity and physics?
Every country's media picks their stories for their "it boy" or "it girl," and Ilia and his team tried to capitalize on that. Yes, he probably has a lot of pressure, but he also (I guess) got a lot of money for turning himself into one of the Olympics' faces...