Feb 13, 2026; Milan, Italy; Ilia Malinin of the United States of America competes in the men’s singles free program during the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games at Milano Ice Skating Arena. Credit: James Lang-Imagn Images
By Sam Neumann on

Coordinating producer Alexa Pritting has been working on Olympic figure skating since 2006. She’s seen favorites crack under pressure before. She’s seen leads evaporate and sure things fall apart. But she’d never seen anything like what was happening to Ilia Malinin on Friday night in Milan.

The technical score on the screen in NBC’s control room should have been pushing toward 100. Instead, it was stuck in the 60s. Then it dropped into the 50s. Then, somehow, the 40s. Malinin — the Quad God, the two-time world champion, the guy who hadn’t lost an international competition in more than two years — was imploding.

“I’ve seen every competition that Ilia’s ever done, and he’s made mistakes here and there, but never to this degree,” Pritting told Awful Announcing. “And so as it was unfolding, you’re just doing what the skaters are doing, and that math of ‘Well, he still has this many quads left. He still has this left, like he’ll be OK.'”

He wasn’t going to be OK.

The Milano Ice Skating Arena was standing-room-only on Friday night. Nearly 10,000 people had packed into every available space, and they weren’t there to see Mikhail Shaidorov or Kevin Aymoz or any of the other men’s figure skating medalists from the short program two days earlier. They were there for Malinin. The first and only man to land a quadruple axel in international competition. The skater who’d won 12 consecutive events. The lock.

Pritting and Matt Marvin, NBC’s line producer, had spent Friday preparing for what everyone assumed would be a coronation. They’d run through scenarios in the production meetings — seven quads and a quad axel if everything went according to plan, something slightly less dominant if nerves showed up, maybe even an upset, though Malinin’s five-point lead after Thursday’s short program made that seem unlikely.

But nothing in their preparation came remotely close to what actually unfolded. Malinin had been so remarkably consistent for so long that even when the mistakes started piling up in real time Friday night, both producers kept thinking he’d find a way to pull through. That’s what he’d always done.

From the control room, Pritting tried to rationalize what she’d just witnessed.

The quad axel is the hardest jump anyone’s ever done in figure skating. Missing it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. The quad loop came next, and Pritting knew that element ranks among Malinin’s more difficult jumps compared to his other quads. When he downgraded that to a double, she figured, OK, those are both tough elements, maybe he’s just slightly off on those two particular jumps. Then, Malinin fell on a quad Lutz, which is one of his signature jumps, an element he can execute cleanly in practice without even thinking about technique.

That’s when the math of figure skating’s scoring system started working against Malinin in ways that couldn’t be overcome.

The sport rewards attempting difficult elements even when you fall — skaters still receive credit for completing the rotations, which means technical points still get awarded even if execution isn’t clean. But popping jumps, which means bailing out mid-air and downgrading to significantly easier elements, costs you all those technical points.

Malinin would still manage to land three clean quads during the program — more than several other competitors managed in their performances — but those singles and doubles where quads should have been, combined with the two falls and their associated deductions, created a cumulative scoring catastrophe.

For Marvin, the turning point from his vantage point behind-the-scenes came even earlier than Malinin’s first fall. The moment that crystallized something unprecedented happened when Malinin popped two jumps in quick succession. He’d planned harder, more valuable elements, but ended up executing easier ones instead.

Tara Lipinski said something on the broadcast about never seeing Ilia make mistakes like this, and that’s when both Pritting and Marvin looked at each other with the dawning realization that this performance was unfolding in a way neither of them had ever witnessed before from this skater. When the first actual fall to the ice happened moments later, it confirmed what they were thinking.

“At that point, it was like, ‘OK, this is different now,'” Marvin recalled. “‘We may have something way different than even what we thought could possibly happen.'”

The program mercifully ended. Malinin skated to center ice and buried his face in his hands, the weight of what had just happened clearly crushing him. The crowd rose to give him a standing ovation anyway, recognizing that they’d just witnessed something historic even if it wasn’t the history anyone expected to see.

Mikhail Shaidorov sat in the leader’s chair positioned next to the kiss and cry area, waiting to see if his score would hold up. The 21-year-old from Kazakhstan had started Friday in fifth place, not remotely considered a medal contender by most observers. He’d just skated what might have been the performance of his life. And now, with Malinin’s collapse confirmed, Shaidorov was about to become Kazakhstan’s first-ever Olympic figure skating gold medalist.

The setup of the leader’s chair created an unavoidable moment that both Pritting and Marvin knew would be central to the story NBC needed to tell. Malinin would have to walk directly past Shaidorov on his way off the ice — the devastated favorite whose Olympic dream had just shattered and the ecstatic underdog whose life had just changed forever, forced to come face to face in the rawest possible moment.

Malinin stopped walking. He turned to Shaidorov, who was still crying, still trying to process what had just happened. The two skaters have known each other since they were kids, coming up through the junior ranks together, and have traveled the same international competition circuit for years. Despite everything Malinin was going through in that moment, he reached out and hugged Shaidorov. They embraced, and the NBC cameras captured all of it.

“He’s known Shaidorov since they were younger athletes, and that moment of him hugging Shaidorov, just the sportsmanship in that moment, really helped elevate that moment too,” Pritting said. “And then him marching right to Andrea Joyce without any hesitation, and answering the questions openly and honestly — how you handle in front of everybody what happens next was really great to see from such a young athlete that had not experienced this kind of shock before, and also on this stage.”

Andrea Joyce was waiting for him rinkside, and Malinin walked straight to her without hesitating, without taking a moment to compose himself or hide from the cameras.

The broadcast could have easily gone sideways in a moment like that. This kind of shocking, devastating collapse requires announcers to strike exactly the right tone without overthinking it, to be empathetic without being maudlin, honest about what’s happening without piling on, and finding ways to celebrate Shaidorov’s incredible upset win without completely ignoring or minimizing Malinin’s heartbreak. Both Pritting and Marvin emphasized that they didn’t give any guidance or direction to their booth announcers about tone or approach once Malinin started skating. They simply trusted their team to handle it.

“In a live situation like that, you trust your announcers,” Marvin explained. “We went over storylines beforehand, and how to handle certain subjects, but once the athletic event is unfolding, that’s why you hire these people. You trust them to do what they’re supposed to do.”

Terry Gannon, Tara Lipinski, and Johnny Weir were so clear and aligned with what they were saying and how they were reacting that it made the job significantly easier for everyone behind the camera, Marvin said. They laid the groundwork for covering this story as it unfolded, and everyone in the truck could feel what the announcers were feeling, creating a unified approach to telling the story without anyone having to coordinate it explicitly.

Both Pritting and Marvin talked about what makes Olympic figure skating different from a production standpoint compared to other sports they’ve worked on. It comes down to the singularity of pressure on individual athletes. Marvin drew the comparison to team sports — in basketball, football, or even baseball — if someone is struggling or not performing, there’s always the option to take them out of the game.

“If it’s not going your way, there’s just nowhere to hide,” Marvin said. “It’s on you, and you gotta finish it. You can’t just skate off or go anywhere. That amount of pressure is just so crazy on these athletes.”

When asked where Friday night’s broadcast ranked among the biggest or most significant events they’ve each produced in their careers, both Pritting and Marvin placed it near the very top. Pritting said this particular collapse was uniquely difficult to process because Malinin had been so remarkably consistent for so many years, and he was so far technically above the rest of the competition.

Marvin echoed that. In terms of drama and unexpected outcomes, this ranked at or near the top of anything he’d been part of.

Looking back on the production choices made during the broadcast, Marvin said there’s one decision he’s still thinking about. After Malinin’s first quad axel attempt turned into a single, which was the first real sign that something might be off, Marvin wondered whether he should have immediately shown a replay of that jump to give the announcers a chance to analyze what went wrong and start building the narrative that Malinin might be struggling. The problem is there’s always a tradeoff with those decisions — if you go to a replay, you might miss capturing the live moment and the raw emotion in the kiss and cry when Malinin gets his scores.

“But there’s a flip side,” Marvin said. “Maybe then you don’t catch as much of the live moment in the kiss and cry.” It’s the eternal production dilemma. “You can go back and forth on those decisions forever without getting a good answer.”

“That’s the best part about live TV — you have your format or plan, but you have to react to the live event and not let your plan get in the way,” Pritting added. “No matter what you plan, they have to get on the ice and skate. That’s the testament of a great producer — that you can flex.”

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann