Ilia Malinin places 8th after falling twice in Olympic free skate - ESPN

MILAN — American figure skating sensation Ilia Malinin fell twice in a disastrous free skate at the Milan Cortina Olympics on Friday night, dropping him off the podium and allowing Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan to claim a stunning gold medal.

The self-styled «Quad God,» who led by a comfortable margin after the short program, merely had to deliver a mediocre performance to add individual gold to his team gold medal. Instead, the 21-year-old Malinin was trying to fight back tears after one of the worst nights of his career, one that left a star-packed crowd inside Milano Ice Arena sitting in stunned silence.

«I blew it,» Malinin said. «That's honestly the first thing that came to my mind.»

Shaidorov finished with a career-best 291.58 points to give his nation its first gold medal of the Winter Games, while Yuma Kagiyama earned his second consecutive Olympic silver medal and Japanese teammate Shun Sato took bronze.

Then there was Malinin, who fell all the way to eighth place. He finished with 264.49 points, ending a two-plus year unbeaten streak that covered 14 full competitions, including two consecutive world championships that he won with ease.

«Honestly, yeah, I was not expecting that,» he said. «I felt going into this competition I was so ready. I just felt ready going on that ice. I think maybe that might have been the reason, is I was too confident it was going to go well.»

Much of Malinin's journey in Milan had felt a little bit off.

He was beaten by Kagiyama in the short program of the team event, later acknowledging that the pressure of competing in the Olympics had started to get to him. And he still wasn't quite his dominant self despite a head-to-head win against Sato in the team free skate, which clinched