Ilia Malinin of the United States competes during the men's free skate program in figure skating at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday.(AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

MILAN (AP) — Ilia Malinin wound his way through the tunnels beneath the Milano Ice Skating Arena on Friday night, trying in vain to explain — or even just understand — exactly went wrong in an Olympic free skate that could only be described as a disaster.

Out in the arena, Mikhail Shaidorov was taking a victory lap wearing the gold medal everyone expected the American to win.

And playing over the loudspeakers: Coldplay’s song “Viva La Vida,” and the lyrics that begin, “I used to rule the world …”

In one of the biggest upsets in figure skating history, Malinin fell twice and made several other glaring mistakes, sending the “Quad God” tumbling all the way off the podium and leaving a star-studded crowd in stunned silence. And that cleared the way for Shaidorov, the mercurial but talented jumping dynamo from Kazakhstan, to claim the first gold medal for his nation at these Winter Games.

“Honestly, I still haven’t been able to process what just happened,” Malinin said. “I mean, going into this competition, I felt really good this whole day. Feeling really solid. I just thought that all I needed to do was trust the process that I’ve always been doing.

“But it’s not like any other competition. It’s the Olympics,” he added, “and I think people (don’t) realize the pressure and the nerves that actually happen from the inside. So it was really just something that overwhelmed me and I just felt like just I had no control.”

Out of control is a good way to summarize the performance.

The 21-year-old Shaidorov finished with a career-best 291.58 points, while Yuma Kagiyama earned his second consecutive Olympic silver medal and Japanese teammate Shun Sato took bronze.

Then there was Malinin, also 21, who dropped all the way to eighth. The two-time world champion finished with 264.49 points, his worst total score in nearly four years, and one that ended a two-plus year unbeaten streak covering 14 full competitions.

“Honestly, yeah, I was not expecting that,” Malinin said. “I felt going into this competition I was so ready. I just felt ready going on that ice. I think maybe that might have been the reason, is I was too confident it was going to go well.”

Much of Malinin’ journey during the Milan Cortina Games had felt a little bit off.

He was beaten by Kagiyama in the short program of the team event, later acknowledging for the first time the pressure of winning at the Olympics was starting to get to him. And he still wasn’t quite his dominant self in the team free skate, even though a head-to-head win over Sato was enough to clinch the second consecutive gold medal for the American squad.

But by the time of his individual short program Tuesday night, Malinin’s fearless swagger and unrivaled spunk seemed to be back. He took a five-point lead over Kagiyama and Adam Siao Him Fa of France that seemed insurmountable going into Friday night.

“Going into the competition,” Malinin said, “I felt like this is what I wanted to do, this is what we planned, this is what I practiced, and really just needed to go out there and do what I always do. That did not happen, and I don’t know why. “