2026 Olys Mens FS PBP - Habemus Pop-am

I hope Ilia stays offline and just goes and enjoys the rest of the Olympics (or goes home, whatever he needs). All these comparisons to Biles but he won’t deal with the racism/sexism she dealt with, thankfully. I think Nathan is the best comparison and if he wants to talk with someone that is his person.
 
In a lot of ways, I'm really disappointed for Adam Siao Him Fa. His skating--when it is on--is pretty much the complete package from my viewpoint.

I'm hopeful that Ilia will work to develop the rest of his skating over the next couple of years rather than focusing on a quint jump.
 
Ilya looked halfway through the program empty, as he lost his energy/power. I don't know if it was mentally or physically. I hope he has a good support network around him.
The whole world was excecting extraordinary things, betting on by how much points he'll win not on placements. Next time I hope for less media frenzy.
 
Thoughts:

Bad Friday the 13th juju in that event today. I can’t recall such a poorly skated event in recent memory. Ugggh! Not an event I will watch back, with so many falls and mistakes from the majority of skaters. Congratulations to Shaidorov, even though his free program is probably my least favorite of the top men this season. He had the most complete and error free program of the night with the hardest jumps. And I was such a fan of Denis Ten back in the day so it makes me happy for his country. But just wow, none of the men scored over 200 in the free skate and most well below that. What a mental mine field today. Hard to watch it all.

Ilia awwww. I just want to hug Ilia and wrap him up in love and support. We all (his fans) still love him and he is already one of the all-time greats. The Olympic pressure is an unforgiving beast, especially for the top medal contenders. So many greats have not medaled or not achieved Olympic gold when expected. And so many surprise winners over the years. I was thinking the other day that no U.S. man has won the singles gold at their first Olympics. Am I right on that? Anyway, it is sport. Ilia is still very young. I’m looking forward to the next four years as always, and I’m sure Ilia will have many shining moments still to come.
 
It's insane and shocking that Ilia needed roughly 183 in the free skate to win (after Yuma's scores went up), and with a season's best 55 points higher than that (238 at Grand Prix Final) the door was wide open for him but he couldn't get there.

I'm troubled by his comments about being left off the team for Beijing, but it's understandable that he's searching for scapegoats - it will take some time to work through everything that went wrong before and during this competition and ultimately accept this and move on. I also agree with other posts that questioned his mental health and psychological state this week (some reposts on social media, as one example) and I wish his team had better control over those external factors and helping to block it all out.

Hoping that he works closely with a sports psychologist and media management as part of his team if he sticks around for the next quad.
 
I am almost speechless at the results so I'll just think about something that made me very happy - Stephen Gogolev's skate. Boy did he impress me. Besides delivering almost perfect jumps, this was the first time I felt like he delivered his performance convincingly rather than just as moves without meaning that he had practiced a million times. I think that's partly because he appears to be a fairly introverted or even shy person. Whatever the case it was much more enjoyable today. (I'll say that in my opinion Shaidorov also made big strides today in his ability to deliver a performance along with the jumps.)

Anyway, for fun, I took Stephen's best Short Program score at the Olympics here in the Team event and added it to his best Free Skate score today from today's individual event. The I compared the total to the combined scores of the rest of the men here in the individual event. It would have been enough here for 3rd place and a bronze medal. To be fair I did the opposite and combined his 2 lower scores and discovered that total would have put him 11th.

Guess that just speaks to the volatile nature of Men's skating. It ain't over until it's over. Hugs to all the men who had a rough skate today and congratulations to those who were able to deliver their best.
 
Spikefan said:
I hope Ilia stays offline and just goes and enjoys the rest of the Olympics (or goes home, whatever he needs). All these comparisons to Biles but he won’t deal with the racism/sexism she dealt with, thankfully. I think Nathan is the best comparison and if he wants to talk with someone that is his person.
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Or Kurt Browning. Or Mikaela Shiffrin.

barbk said:
In a lot of ways, I'm really disappointed for Adam Siao Him Fa. His skating--when it is on--is pretty much the complete package from my viewpoint.

I'm hopeful that Ilia will work to develop the rest of his skating over the next couple of years rather than focusing on a quint jump.
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He's sublime. A real artist.
 
I'm still trying to process what I saw. I'm so heartbroken for Ilia and his parents. When he was younger/lower levels, Ilia was a regular at my club's comp. It's been amazing to see him win nat'l and world titles in person and I was excited to see him win an OGM (or any medal).

I don't really know what to say....I've been thinking he was a bit too....confident, the whole "Quad God" thing....but he backed it up with 7-quad programs and huge wins. This season, I had concerns about how well his team was managing media and sponsor obligations, would it distract Ilia, or mess with his head? We probably won't know what really happened....I hope his team and USFS learn from this. I hope this doesn't haunt him.
 
terisa said:
The hype contributed to the pressure, and Ilia was not prepared for it. The hype also raised the public's expectations beyond likely reality, meaning more disappointment now.
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I am concerned about the pressure that is now going to be on the U.S. women to come home with a gold medal. I hope they stay off social media, or perhaps all media, until their event.
VGThuy said:
Has there ever been an Olympic podium for figure skating where all 3 medalists were happy? 1992 Men’s?
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Ah yes, the all time great "nobody wants to win this" Men's event against which all others are judged. Yeah, they were all pretty happy.

The normies are going to be asking me about this today. As I haven't seen it and won't have time before I'm out and about I'll be going solely on the elements lists.


ETA: Oh, and congrats to Alexei Urmanov - Olympic champion and coach of an Olympic champion.
 
Bunny Hop said:
I am concerned about the pressure that is now going to be on the U.S. women to come home with a gold medal. I hope they stay off social media, or perhaps all media, until their event.

Ah yes, the all time great "nobody wants to win this" Men's event against which all others are judged. Yeah, they were all pretty happy.

The normies are going to be asking me about this today. As I haven't seen it and won't have time before I'm out and about I'll be going solely on the elements lists.
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Just tell them all about Denis Ten and by the time you finish the story, they'll be crying and think this was the best result in the history of the Olympics. You won't even need to talk about scores.
 
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