Winter Olympics 2026 men’s figure skating live updates: Ilia Malinin chases gold medal in free skate final

It’s so fitting that Simone Biles is here, not just because she’s an Olympian and we expect a big Olympic moment tonight. She also happens to be, in my opinion, the best comparison to Ilia Malinin when it comes to explaining how they dominate. We got into this a bit in our newsletter today. Biles has been so successful in gymnastics because she attempts and lands moves that nobody else dares even try. And from a scoring perspective, that puts her ahead of the pack and insulates her from mistakes. Malinin has the same benefit, especially when he lands that quadruple axel that nobody else can. Their moves get absurdly high baselines, which naturally pushes up their scores, even if they make minor mistakes.

One difference between Malinin and Biles? On something like a vault, Biles would be focused on pulling off a single move. In a skating program, Malinin strings together several.