After erupting in applause when he was introduced, the Milano Ice Skating Arena fell silent as Malinin took his starting position and his music —actually Malinin’s own voice in an opening spoken word section—began. He landed a clean quad flip to start the program and seemed to be on track to repeat his seven-quad performance from December. But it soon became clear that his victory was hardly a sure thing. The next jump was supposed to be the quad axel that only he has landed in competition, but he popped it in the air and only received points for a single axel. He seemed to brush off that mistake and landed a solid quad lutz, but then faltered on the planned quad loop and opened up again in the air, completing only two rotations.