After having a nightmare free skate performance in the men’s figure skating competition at the Winter Olympic Games, he could only watch on as he went from a 99% favorite to win before the night started to finishing in eighth.
His father and coach, Roman Skorniakov, sat beside Malinin and comforted his son in his darkest hour. What was the first step in his road to becoming the greatest of all time turned into terror on an international broadcast for millions to see.
While the 21-year-old world champion was gracious in defeat, congratulating new gold medalist Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan, tears welled in his eyes.
Maybe worse of all, his mom more than likely had no clue what just happened to her son.
Tatiana Malinina is also Malinin’s coach alongside Roman, but she does not sit with their son during competitions. She doesn’t even sit in the arena.
Tatiana doesn’t watch her son compete live at all.
MILAN, ITALY – FEBRUARY 13: Ilia Malinin of team United States speaks to his father and coach Roman Skorniakov before competing in the Men’s Single
Her son opened up about her nervousness in a recent interview with TODAY.
“My mom won’t watch in person,” Malinin told TODAY’s Craig Melvin. “She won’t watch over TV. She waits for my dad to give her the phone call that it is finished, and then he tells her what happened. And then after a few days, that’s when she goes and watches it.”
Be it superstition or pure nerves, it had worked for over two years, as Malinin was undefeated in competition and the gargantuan favorite even before getting first in the short program two nights ago.
NBC broadcast mentioned that Tatiana hadn’t spoken to her son the entire week, which seemed like a good omen after his gold in the team event and his strong start in the individual competition.
But on Friday, everything went awry.
She might know it yet, but her son experienced one of the worst upset losses in Olympic history.
