U.S. Men 2025-26 Discussion - Quad God and the Mere Mortals

[Sylvia]

Well, he'll be in good company. Kurt Browning doesn't have an Olympic gold either.

It's still mind-boggling to me that Kurt doesn't have an Olympic MEDAL!

Can people outside the USA watch NBC Sports' Andrea Joyce's interview with Ilia as soon as he had finished his FS?

NBC Olympics & Paralympics on Instagram: "An honest Ilia Malinin after a disappointing free skate."

9,554 likes, 400 comments - nbcolympics on February 13, 2026: "An honest Ilia Malinin after a disappointing free skate.".

www.instagram.com

 

[skatfan]

Oh, please, there was no such message. Your obsession with Jason is leading you to post some really ridiculous stuff. (But, hey, at least it's not super nasty and gleefully celebrating when an athlete has his worst day!) Each time Andrew took the ice at Worlds, he had no way of knowing if Jason would earn another spot for next year since Jason skated after him. All the guys knew that Jason could possibly (but not necessarily) earn a third spot at Worlds and the Olympics, but if they wanted to be on that next team, they had to make it happen for themselves. And they all were a mess. It's not like these guys went to competitions and said to themselves, I don't care how I place. Do you really think that Andrew didn't care about how he did at Worlds?



Why? Raf is a jump doctor. Even with skaters based in California, he reportedly doesn't do a lot more than that. Ilia does not need more help with his jumps. Raf has been one of his coaches for years, saw what happened with Nathan when the American media's focus and sponsors expectations were on him, and doesn't seem to have been able to help Ilia. Having read what Nathan wrote and listening to what Mariah, Ashley, and Adam have said about Raf, I don't see how spending more time with Raf would help at all.

I think Ilia needs the name of the sports psychologist Nathan used leading up to 2022.

 

[Sylvia]

Tomoki Hiwatashi 樋渡知樹 posted 3 times on X:

Feb 10:
So happy for all three US Men's today!!!!
You all are amazing!!
Good luck in Free skate too!!

Feb. 13:
So proud of the US Men athletes for fighting till the end. Hoping they can all get a good rest and enjoy the rest of the experience being at Milan.
It's also amazing how I've been able to compete with almost everyone at Olympic.
Congrats to everyone there!!! https://x.com/Tomostar0120/status/2022532784951337149

 

[AYS]

I am so sad for Ilia, and for us fans who he's thrilled over the past 2-3 years.

I do have to say it was either coaching or athlete malpractice to go for the quad axel when skating from ahead for Olympic gold (if he was way behind, it would have been worth the risk). He did not need it, but there was always the potential for it to rattle him it to go right. Hindsight, blah, blah, but I was literally yelling at the screen when he took his starting position not to do it.

My feeling is he might have taken the winning part a little for granted here and was too focused on the history part.

 

[Sylvia]

Arizona figure skater Camden Pulkinen reflects on missing Olympics by Erika Tulfo, a graduate student at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism (Feb. 7, 2026): https://www.azcentral.com/story/spo...lkinen-reflects-missing-olympics/88571569007/
Excerpts:

In a December Instagram post, he told supporters he was making the difficult decision to withdraw from the 2026 U.S. Championships, effectively ending his chances of qualifying for the Olympics. “I've done 20 years of skating in my life so far and I've worked my whole life for this, but I don't want to be crippled at 25 and not be able to move anymore,” Pulkinen said a week ago via Zoom.
“The Olympic motto is ‘faster, higher, stronger,’ and I internalize that in everything I do, but I don't think that should come at the cost of your quality of life or your body or your mental health.”

“From the time he was little, he just had that ability to catch on to things quickly,” said his former coach Karen Gesell. “He’s a big jumper, he’s very charismatic, and he carried that onto the ice in his programs.”
Gesell trained Pulkinen when he started skating at the Ice Den Scottsdale with the Coyotes Skating Club and was with him for 10 years throughout his meteoric rise to his junior debut at the 2016 U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
“His goal was always to go as far as he could go, and I always saw he had the potential to be an Olympian,” Gesell said.
Pulkinen has come close to the Olympics before. In 2016, he skated at the Winter Youth Olympics in Hamar, Norway, making him the first male figure skater to compete as part of Team USA for the men’s singles event. In 2022, he was even selected as an alternate for the American team at the Beijing Olympics alongside Malinin, current Team USA athlete and gold-medal favorite.
“I was really in that next cream of the crop that was ready to go,” he said. “I was ready to push from 2022 until 2026 for the Games. I failed to recognize that four years is a long time. This season is the one that really matters. No one really remembers what you did in 2024, 2023 or 2022. 2026 is the Olympics.”

Pulkinen had been battling lower back pain he said was caused by taking too many hard falls on the ice. What began as a persistent dull ache, grew to the point of crippling whenever he moved, which made training impossible.
He first recognized the signs of a severe injury after his performance at the 2025 Four Continents Championships in Seoul, South Korea, where he finished eighth.
“I remember clutching my back as soon as I finished my free skate in Korea last year,” he said. “I've always had back pain through skating, but never to the point of crippling back pain where I couldn't actually skate.”
Pulkinen admits he has always been an overachiever. He continued to compete from 2021 through 2025 while he was a full-time student at Columbia University and a corporate strategy associate at Capital One.
But with his injury forcing him to take a step back from skating, he said he had time to reflect on his life independent of the sport.
“What I miss most is moving on the ice freely and carving my soul and identity into the ice,” he said in his December Instagram post. “To have that taken from me is the deepest pain, one that carries the weight of feeling as though I have let down past versions of myself.”

But Pulkinen’s absence from this year’s Olympics has raised questions in online fan spaces about the future of his skating career. The next Winter Olympics are set to take place in 2030 in the French Alps, and Pulkinen will be 29, past the age most male competitive figure skaters retire.
Pulkinen said it’s still too early to make a call on whether he would try to qualify for the next Winter Olympics, but one thing’s for sure. He plans on staying on the ice one way or another.
“I'm not closing the door to skating,” he said. “I love the sport. I don't know if that means I make a run for 2030. I don't know if that means I take a different role like a coach or choreographer. The thing that's true is I will never not be a skater.”

 

[Debbie S]

It's still mind-boggling to me that Kurt doesn't have an Olympic MEDAL!

And he's had a pretty good career in show skating and doing choreo. He's had a better career than some Oly medalists.

Ilia is a great performer. We've seen that in his gala programs, like the NF number and To Build a Home at Worlds last year. And he choreos most of them himself. He's talked about wanting to improve the non-jump aspects of his skating.

Can people outside the USA watch NBC Sports' Andrea Joyce's interview with Ilia as soon as he had finished his FS?

NBC Olympics & Paralympics on Instagram: "An honest Ilia Malinin after a disappointing free skate."

9,554 likes, 400 comments - nbcolympics on February 13, 2026: "An honest Ilia Malinin after a disappointing free skate.".

www.instagram.com

Yes, but i'm using a VPN.

 

[DreamSkates]

Ilia needs to decompress for a while. If it were me, I'd stay away from all media for a few days, be surrounded by friends family and coaches and chill. Then make a plan for Worlds if he decides to go.

In retrospect, one of the best things Nathan had was a worthy domestic competitor in Vincent. Vincent attempted practically the same number of quads as Nathan and although not as consistant as Nathan Chen, he was always there ready to take advantage of any mistake. That's what Ilia needs. Real competition not winning by 60 points.

Asking out of curiosity. Shadarov earned 114 technical points in his long program Do you think that, with time and he develops artistically, he could be the kind of competitor you mentioned?

 

[DreamSkates]

I'm not saying that there wouldn't have been any benefit, and I wish his parents/coaches had planned more for that. But, I just don't think going to the Olympics with very little senior competitive experience - he didn't even have the required minimums when the Olympic team was named - and without the major expectations and media attention would have been the same.

I'm really sad for him, and I hate to think of the crap he's going to get from haters.

I would hope that over time he has learned or is learning to ignore the haters.

 

[Theatregirl1122]

I'm not sure why there needs to be "blame" at all. What happened happened. It happened TO ILIA, so blaming him as if he did something to others is ridiculous. I'm sure there are a lot of reasons why this happened. Some that were in his control, some that were in the control of others, and maybe some that weren't in the control of anyone. Ilia didn't mean for it to happen, and neither did anyone else, and the person suffering the most over it is him. So maybe some people should go ahead and give him a break.

I also notice that a lot of people who do not know him in person at all are very quick to ascribe a wide variety of personality traits to him based on his internet persona, despite the fact that most of us are old enough to know that someone's social media persona is not necessarily reflective of who they are.

 

[YukiNieve]

Maxim’s words of support for Ilia via Access Hollywood today:

Thank you so much for this link! As I wrote in another thread, Ilia really cared about Max when he was going through a very difficult time after losing his parents. Now, Max is saying that they are caring about Ilia. It's always amazing (and understandable) to see how much these athletes care about each other, even though they're competitors since they're in the best position to understand each other.

Personally, I think he mentioned Beijing amidst confusion after finishing such dissapointing skate and was experiencing raw emotions and searching for an explanation.

I don't think he minds it (the lack of Beijing experience) as much as he minds his self-worth, as Max mentioned ("A lot of times for skaters in general, their performance is so-tied to their self-worth, so it's a massive blow to us personally").

Ilia has repeatedly said that one of his objectives is to "become a better version of himself," which implies that his goals are further out and that he is not satisfied yet with who he is or what he does now. So I think he is most likely blaming himself now and not the lack of Beijing experience.

But I am somewhat relieved to hear what Max said at the end: "Knowing him, he's gonna be OK."

 

[Theatregirl1122]

I do have to say it was either coaching or athlete malpractice to go for the quad axel when skating from ahead for Olympic gold

We don't actually know that he WAS going for the quad, as far as I know. We know that Tara said he was planning it, but I don't believe Ilia has said that's what he was doing. I think people are assuming he was because he popped and we assume he wouldn't pop the 3A, but we don't know.

That being said, Ilia's hit rate with the quad axel is quite high. It's a wildly difficult jump, but he's consistent with it, so I don't really see how it's malpractice to go for a jump he's consistent at. Someone with more data would have to confirm, but I would bet he's more consistent with the 4A than the 4L.

 

[kwanfan1818]

I thought his 3A entrance is different, and that he used his typical approach for a 4A. However, if he was planning to change it into a 3A, perhaps his muscle memory and his planning brain crossed wires. How many program variations do we expect him to keep in his head?

 

[AYS]

We don't actually know that he WAS going for the quad, as far as I know. We know that Tara said he was planning it, but I don't believe Ilia has said that's what he was doing. I think people are assuming he was because he popped and we assume he wouldn't pop the 3A, but we don't know.

That being said, Ilia's hit rate with the quad axel is quite high. It's a wildly difficult jump, but he's consistent with it, so I don't really see how it's malpractice to go for a jump he's consistent at. Someone with more data would have to confirm, but I would bet he's more consistent with the 4A than the 4L.

Ilia never telegraphs 3axels like that. He was thinking quad.

 

[barbk]

Maybe this isn't a bad thing though. Ilia has more to offer than just quads. I think he could thrive in a new way given the chance (and maybe save some wear and tear on his body).

And perhaps he will work on more completeness in his skating. He's way ahead of the leaderboard on jumps (most of the time)--but lacks some of the quality others have in spins, footwork, and sheer edging. He has room for growth and I don't doubt his ability to achieve that if he turns his attention in that direction.

 

[Debbie S]

We don't actually know that he WAS going for the quad, as far as I know. We know that Tara said he was planning it, but I don't believe Ilia has said that's what he was doing.

His planned program content had 4A listed. Of course, skaters don't always do exactly what their plan says, but if it was listed, i'm pretty sure that was the intention going in.

If he consciously was planning to do a 3A on the approach, I don't think he would have popped it. His vertical leap also seemed more in line with the 4A than the 3A.

 

[Allskate]

We don't actually know that he WAS going for the quad, as far as I know. We know that Tara said he was planning it, but I don't believe Ilia has said that's what he was doing. I think people are assuming he was because he popped and we assume he wouldn't pop the 3A, but we don't know.

I think people are assuming he was going for the quad axel because he indicated to Andrea Joyce that he probably was going for seven jumps, and the quad axel would have been a part of it. Plus, my understanding is that the skaters do submit a planned element list that is entered into the system and that the NBC team can see it. The skaters obviously don't have to stick to it, though.

That being said, Ilia's hit rate with the quad axel is quite high. It's a wildly difficult jump, but he's consistent with it, so I don't really see how it's malpractice to go for a jump he's consistent at. Someone with more data would have to confirm, but I would bet he's more consistent with the 4A than the 4L.

I don't know what the stats are, but he probably has done fewer quad loops than quad axels. I suspect that the 4L is probably the quad that he has the least confidence in. There was so much hype about the quad axel that I think he really wanted to do it. I think the axel and the loop definitely were the two riskiest and stressful for him. Most of the guys seem to not like the quad loop much.

Ilia could have left out the quad loop and quad axel and still won easily, but I think it's in his nature to go for broke. It's a double- edged sword. Pushing the limits is what has made him such an amazing skater, but it also can cause him problems.