Ilia Malinin was caught on a hot mic on Friday (February 13) at the 2026 Olympics when he shockingly fell twice during his ice skating performance, landing him in 8th place.

Leading up to the event, the 21-year-old Team USA figure skater was thought to be the gold medal front runner.

After falling, Ilia was heard on a hot mic while waiting for his scores.

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He apparently said while waiting to see if he’d medal, “Beijing, I would not have skated like that,” he could be heard saying. “It’s not easy.”

In an interview (via the Athletic), he elaborated more on his thoughts about what he said on the hot mic: “I think if I went to ’22, then I would have had more experience and know how to handle this Olympic environment. But also I don’t know what the next stages of my life would look like if I went there. So now all I can do is just regroup from this and really just take in the information that happened and just figure out how to manage in the future.”

Four years ago, Ilia, when he was only 17 years old, surprisingly landed a silver medal at the U.S. Championships, but U.S. Figure Skating opted to send Vincent Zhou and Jason Brown to the 2022 Olympics instead.

See what Ilia said in his first statements after losing out on a medal.