By Ben Church, CNN
Milan, Italy (CNN) — When Ilia Malinin’s score was displayed on screen at the end of his free skate on Friday, no one could believe what they saw.
Journalists looked at each other in stunned silence, while members of the crowd sat with their mouths open even wider than their eyes.
The eighth-place finish just didn’t look right next to his name. He was supposed to win and make history doing so. This just couldn’t happen.
But then the cruel reality of sport soon kicked in, and the realization of what had transpired in the previous five minutes began to dawn on those inside the Milano Ice Skating Arena.
The self-proclaimed “Quad God” had not won the gold medal. He hadn’t won any medal at all.
While others tried to come to terms with the almighty surprise, Malinin was still playing catch-up with all the emotions racing through his head.
“Honestly, I still haven’t been able to process what just happened,” the 21-year-old told reporters just minutes after his routine.
“It’s a lot of mixed emotions. Going into this competition, I felt really good this whole time, really solid. I thought that all I needed to do was go out there and trust the process.
“But of course, it’s not like any other competition; it’s the Olympics, and I think people only realize the pressure and the nerves that actually happen from the inside. It was just something that overwhelmed me, and I felt like I had no control.”
Before any of the athletes took to the ice, everyone was talking about how, not if, Malilin was going to win gold. He had established a five-point lead over his closest rival after a superb short program routine earlier in the week and just needed to see it out again on Friday.
The conversation before had mainly centered around whether he would become the first skater to land a quadruple Axel at the Olympics, a move so difficult that only he had ever successfully performed it in competition.
If he were to lose to anyone, though, it would likely be to Yuma Kagiyama. So when the Japanese star struggled in the routine before Malinin, it left the door wide open for the American to secure his second Olympic gold.
He couldn’t miss. Until he did.
‘So many negative thoughts’
Malinin told reporters that the nerves really kicked in when he took his starting pose in the middle of the rink. When everyone sat on the edge of their seat, waiting for him produce magic, the youngster’s head was somewhere entirely different.
“All the traumatic moments of my life really just started flooding my head, and there were just so many negative thoughts that just flooded into there,” he added. “I just did not handle it.”
It led to a uncharacteristically sloppy and relatively simplistic routine, complete with two falls that the American just couldn’t recover from.
Every slip was greeted with increasingly louder gasps from the crowd. Each fall then triggered a cacophony of cheers as supporters did their best to rally behind an athlete so clearly in need of help.
His usual swagger, an attitude some see as arrogance, had abandoned him. He looked totally