MILAN — Ilia Malinin need only to have looked into the stands on Friday night, where Nathan Chen watched as the American figure skating sensation known as the ''Quad god'' fell apart in his Olympic free skate, for inspiration about what might come next.
The overwhelming favorite to win gold, Malinin fell twice amid a calamitous program that he seemingly had perfected over the past year, sending him tumbling from first place all the way off the podium and allowing Mikhail Shaidorov to claim gold instead.
It bore an eerie resemblance to the scene that unfolded at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games.
Chen, who like Malinin had been groomed by Hall of Fame coach Rafael Arutyunyan, was considered the favorite along with Japan's Yuzuru Hanyu to stand atop the podium in South Korea. Instead, Chen fell once during his short program and struggled through the rest of it, leaving him so far behind that not even his winning free skate could earn him a medal.
One month later, he won his first world title. Four years later, Chen won Olympic gold in Beijing.
''I can't go back and change it, even though I would love to,'' Malinin said, candidly. ''You have to take what happened or what you've learned from this and really just change or decide what you want to do for the future, and how to approach things.''
What made the 21-year-old Malinin's fall so stunning was not just that he has been the dominant skater of his generation, building an unbeaten streak stretching back more than two years and claiming the past two world championships with relative ease.
It's that everything was setting up perfectly for him.
