MILAN (AP) — It seemed only fitting that Ilia Malinin was the first one to get his Olympic gold medal after the U.S. successfully defended its team title by holding off the Japanese on Sunday night in the three-day competition at the Milan Cortina Games.
After all, everything came down to him in the end.
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Ilia Malinin of the United States competes during the figure skating men's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Amber Glenn of the United States competes during the figure skating women's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Kaori Sakamoto of Japan competes during the figure skating women's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Amber Glenn of the United States reacts to her scores after competing during the figure skating women's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
Sara Conti and Niccolo Macii of Italy compete during the figure skating pairs team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan compete during the figure skating pairs team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan compete during the figure skating pairs team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea of the United States compete during the figure skating pairs team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea of the United States compete during the figure skating pairs team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
With the teams tied after seven of eight performances, Malinin calmly delivered for the Americans. The 21-year-old nicknamed the “Quad God” landed five quadruple jumps and scored 200.03 points for his free skate, atoning for a mediocre short program — at least by his lofty standards — one night earlier. That was enough to beat Japanese sensation Shun Sato, who followed him to the ice, hit a trio of quads of his own, but could only manage 194.86 points in finishing second.
The U.S. finished with 69 points while Japan had 68, earning the silver medal for the second consecutive Olympics.
“I was like, ‘OK, I’m the deciding factor,'" Malinin said later, after the U.S. got the medal ceremony it was denied at the Beijing Games, when Russian doping held up their awards for more than two years. “'I need to just, you know, do what I need to do.'”
Malinin does it better than anyone in the world.
Matteo Rizzo delivered one of the best free skates of his career as Italy was trying to hold onto the bronze medal, allowing the host nation to finish third with 60 points. Georgia was fourth with 56 and still has never won a Winter Olympics medal.
The U.S. had a five-point lead over Japan after two days of competition. But the advantage dwindled to nothing when world champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara won the pairs free skate and Kaori Sakamoto won the women's free skate earlier Sunday night.
Leave it to the best closer in the business to come through for the Americans.
Malinin opened with a big quad flip, opted for a safer triple axel over his quad, and overcame a couple of mistakes along the way to finish with aplomb. The son of Olympic skaters Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov ended with back-to-back combos, a quad toe-triple flip and a quad salchow-triple axel, leaving a crowd full of American and Japanese fans roaring in approval.
“I knew that it was going to be a tiebreaker between the men’s event,” Malinin said, “so I really just went straight into this, and just went for it. It went exactly the way I wanted, the way I planned. And you know, I'm so thankful for that.”
It wasn't quite over yet. Sato did everything he could to give Japan a chance.
From his opening quad lutz to his finishing triple lutz, Sato was nearly perfect, producing an easier but cleaner program than Malinin had earlier. He pumped his fist the moment his music ended, then had to wait to hear whether it was enough.
It wasn't quite.
“I didn't really think about whether or not I could beat Ilia,” Sato said through a translator, “but I definitely wanted to do it.”
The pairs were first on the ice Sunday night, and Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea put out the best free skate of their pairs career when the U.S. needed it the most, beating the Canadians to avoid dropping a much-needed point to the winning Japanese pairs team.
That point ended up being the margin of victory in the end.
Kam and O'Shea scored 135.36 points for their program, which opened with “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurythmics and finished with “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears. Miura and Kihara won the segment with a career-best of their own of 155.55 points, pulling the Japanese within two points of the Americans with two events remaining.
“We couldn’t be more proud to be able to perform under what we felt was so much energy,” said the 34-year-old O’Shea, who was an Olympic alternate in 2018 but is making his debut at the Winter Games. "We walked into the day, walked into the rink with positive emotions, with an offensive attitude, and that showed out there on the ice."
Then the women took the stage with the U.S. swapping out world champion Alysa Liu for Amber Glenn.
The three-time national champion spun out of her opening triple axel, the most difficult triple jump and one only she tried among the women, and Glenn had to add a late double toe loop after missing an earlier triple as part of a combination. Those two mistakes, and a couple of other errors along the way, left her with 138.62 points — and more crucially, third in the segment.
Kaori Sakamoto, the individual bronze medalist at the Beijing Games, won the free skate with 148.62 points, pulling Japan into a tie for the lead. Anastasiia Gubanova took second in the free skate as she tried to keep Georgia in the race for bronze.
“If an average person were to watch, they’d probably be like, ‘Oh, it’s fine. Just a few little things,' but as skating people we know, there were many, many, many points left out on the table,” Glenn said. "I did not feel or perform the way I wanted to. I physically didn’t feel great. My legs were feeling heavy, I was tired, I just didn’t feel my best, and I’ve been practicing here incredibly.
“It wasn’t how I wanted to feel,” Glenn added. “The adrenaline was really up and I think I just crashed a little bit.”
Fortunately for her, Malinin was there to pick the entire American team up.
“All of us are just so thrilled for all the work you put into this,” he said. “We cannot be here without each other.”
AP Olympic coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
Ilia Malinin of the United States competes during the figure skating men's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Amber Glenn of the United States competes during the figure skating women's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Kaori Sakamoto of Japan competes during the figure skating women's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Amber Glenn of the United States reacts to her scores after competing during the figure skating women's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
Sara Conti and Niccolo Macii of Italy compete during the figure skating pairs team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan compete during the figure skating pairs team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan compete during the figure skating pairs team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea of the United States compete during the figure skating pairs team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea of the United States compete during the figure skating pairs team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump made new threats to escalate strikes in Iran on Sunday, a day after U.S. forces pulled off a dramatic rescue of an aviator whose plane fell behind enemy lines after Iran had downed it days earlier.
Iran showed no signs of backing down, striking economic and infrastructure targets in neighboring Gulf Arab countries even as Trump demanded Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
In an expletive-laden post Sunday morning, Trump expanded upon earlier threats, promising strikes on Iran’s power plants and bridges. He vowed the “crazy bastards” would be “living in Hell” if the waterway isn’t opened to marine traffic by Tuesday. He ended his post with “Praise be to Allah.”
The U.S. airman's extraction followed a search-and-rescue operation after the Friday crash of the F-15E Strike Eagle, as Iran also promised a reward for anyone who turned in an “enemy pilot.” Trump said the servicemember was injured but in stable condition.
A second crew member was rescued earlier.
The fighter jet was the first American aircraft to have crashed in Iranian territory since the U.S. and Israel launched the war, striking Iran on Feb. 28. Both sides have threatened and hit civilian targets, bringing warnings of possible war crimes. The war has killed thousands, shaken global markets, cut off key shipping routes and spiked fuel prices.
As Iran continues to exert control over the Strait of Hormuz, Trump, in an earlier social media post, threatened to unleash “all Hell” if it isn’t opened by Monday. He has issued such threats before and extended them when mediators have claimed progress toward ending the war on agreeable terms.
The threats came after Trump said last week that the U.S. had “decimated” Iran and would finish the war “very fast.” Two days later, Iran shot down two U.S. military planes, showing the ongoing perils of the bombing campaign and the ability of a degraded Iranian military to continue to hit back.
The other jet to go down was a U.S. A-10 attack aircraft. Neither the status of the crew nor exactly where it crashed was immediately known.
On Sunday, Iran’s state TV aired a video showing what it claimed were parts of American aircraft shot down by Iranian forces, along with a photo of thick, black smoke rising into the air. The broadcaster said Iran had shot down an American transport plane and two helicopters that were part of the rescue operation.
However, a regional intelligence official briefed on the mission told The Associated Press that the U.S. military blew up two transport planes due to a technical malfunction, forcing it to bring in additional aircraft to complete the rescue. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the covert mission.
Iran’s military joint command on Sunday claimed that four U.S. aircraft were destroyed during the rescue operation and warned of stepping up retaliatory attacks on regional oil and civilian infrastructure if the U.S. and Israel attacked such targets in the Islamic Republic, according to state television.
“We once again repeat: if you commit aggression again and strike civilian facilities, our responses will be more forceful,” a spokesman said in comments run by IRNA news agency.
In Kuwait, Iranian drone attacks caused significant damage to power plants and a petrochemical plant. They also put a water desalination station out of service, according to the Ministry of Electricity. No injuries were reported, the ministry said.
In Bahrain, a drone attack caused a fire at one of the national oil company’s storage facilities and a state-run petrochemical plant, the kingdom’s official news agency said.
In the United Arab Emirates, authorities responded to fires at a petrochemical plant in Ruwais that they said were caused by intercepted debris, halting operations.
The strikes came a day after Israel struck a petrochemical plant in Iran that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said generated revenue that it had used to fund the war.
The petrochemical industry is a key sector in many Gulf states. Plants in Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE and Iran convert oil and gas into products like plastics, polymers and fertilizer, bringing in billions in export revenue.
Trump renewed his threats for Iran to open up the Strait of Hormuz by Monday or face consequences, writing Saturday in a social media post: “Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT. Time is running out — 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them.”
The waterway is a critical chokepoint for commerical trade, especially oil and gas moving from the Persian Gulf to Europe and Asia. Disruptions there have injected volatility into the market and pushed oil and gas-importing countries to seek alternative sources.
“The doors of hell will be opened to you” if Iran’s infrastructure is attacked, Gen. Ali Abdollahi Aliabadi with the country’s joint military command said late Saturday in response to Trump’s renewed threat, state media reported. In turn, the general threatened all infrastructure used by the U.S. military in the region.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Tahir Andrabi, told AP that his government’s efforts to broker a ceasefire are “right on track” after Islamabad last week said that it would soon host talks between the U.S. and Iran.
Mediators from Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt were working to bring the U.S. and Iran to the negotiating table, according to two regional officials.
The proposed compromise includes a cessation of hostilities to allow a diplomatic settlement, according to a regional official involved in the efforts and a Gulf diplomat briefed on the matter. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss closed-door diplomacy.
More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran since the war began.
In Gulf Arab states and the occupied West Bank, more than two dozen people have died, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel and 13 U.S. service members have been killed. In Lebanon, more than 1,400 people have been killed and more than 1 million people have been displaced. Ten Israeli soldiers have died there.
This report has been corrected to show that Borealis is an Austrian company, not Australian.
Metz reported from Jerusalem and Magdy from Cairo. Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.
Vehicles and motorcycles move past an anti-U.S. billboard depicting the American aircrafts into the Iranian armed forces fishing net with signs that read in Farsi: "The Strait of Hormuz will remain closed, The entire Persian Gulf is our hunting ground," at the Eqelab-e-Eslami, or Islamic Revolution square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
In this image provided by Sepahnews, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's official website, wreckage is shown at what Iran's state TV claimed was the site of a downed American transport plane and two helicopters involved in a rescue operation, in Isfahan province, Iran, April, 2026. (Sepahnews via AP)
In this image provided by Sepahnews, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's official website, wreckage is shown at what Iran's state TV claimed was the site of a downed American transport plane and two helicopters involved in a rescue operation, in Isfahan province, Iran, April, 2026. (Sepahnews via AP)
In this image provided by Sepahnews, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's official website, black smoke rises into the air at what Iran's state TV claimed was the site where an American transport plane and two helicopters involved in a rescue operation were shot down, in Isfahan province, Iran, April, 2026. (Sepahnews via AP)
In this image provided by Sepahnews, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's official website, wreckage is shown at what Iran's state TV claimed was the site of a downed American transport plane and two helicopters involved in a rescue operation, in Isfahan province, Iran, April, 2026. (Sepahnews via AP)
Members of Lebanon's General Security stand at the Masnaa border crossing in the Bekaa valley, eastern Lebanon, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
A man, who fled Israeli bombings in southern Lebanon with his family, sleeps in his car used as shelter, along a seaside promenade in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Followers of Iraq's Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr chant slogans as they wave national Iraqi flag during a protest against U.S. and Israeli attacks on multiple cities across Iran, in Tahrir Square, Baghdad, Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, April 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
A bedroom is damaged in a building struck in an Israeli airstrike in the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Saturday, April 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Pedetrians walk by a destroyed building within the Grand Hosseiniyeh, with the mosque visible in the background, which officials at the site say was hit by U.S.-Israeli airstrikes Tuesday, in Zanjan, Iran, Saturday, April 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Police officers and their horses take cover in an underground parking garage as sirens warn of an incoming missile fired from Yemen in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, April 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Maya Levin)
A man looks at a destroyed building within the Grand Hosseiniyeh complex that officials say was hit by U.S.-Israeli airstrikes Tuesday in Zanjan, Iran, Saturday, April 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
