Leading into the free skate event at the Milan Cortina Olympics, an American skater held the top spot.
MILAN, Metropolitan City of Milan — In a shocking turn of events, American figure skating star Ilia Malinin experienced two falls during his free skate routine at the Milan Cortina Olympics on Friday, which dramatically knocked him off the podium and paved the way for Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov to seize an unexpected gold medal.
The 21-year-old skater was visibly distraught as he exited the ice, struggling to hold back tears after enduring one of the most challenging performances of his career, leaving a star-studded audience at the Milano Ice Arena in stunned silence.
Malinin’s performance was marred by two falls and several incomplete jumps, which cost him nearly 72 points due to these missteps, as noted by NBC’s commentators.
Prior to the free skate, Malinin had led the competition after the short program, holding a lead of over five points ahead of Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama. With a free skate score of 156.33, his overall score over the two days totaled 264.49, placing him in 8th position.
In an interview with NBC following his performance, Malinin expressed his surprise: “I was not expecting that. Maybe I was too confident that it was going to go well. I can’t process what happened.”
When asked his first reaction as he finished his free skate: “I blew it. That’s honestly the first thing that came to my mind.”
Shaidorov won gold with a career-best 291.58 points that gave his nation its first gold medal of the Winter Games. Kagiyama won silver with 280.06 points. Shun Sato of Japan took the bronze with 274.90.
U.S. skaters Andrew Torgashev finished 12th and Maxim Naumov finished 20th.
He had teased fans before the free skate by submitting program plans that included the quad axel, a 4 1/2-revolution jump so difficult that nobody but him has ever landed it in competition.
He opened with a quad flip, one of a record-tying seven in his planned program, then appeared to be going after the quad axel only he has ever landed in competition, but had to bail out. He recovered to land a quad lutz — and then the problems really began.
Malinin doubled a planned quad loop, throwing his timing off. He fell on a quad lutz, preventing him from doing the second half of the quad lutz-triple toe loop combination that would have earned him big points. And in his final jumping pass, which was supposed to be a high-scoring quad salchow-triple axel, Malinin only could muster a double salchow — and he fell on that.
By the time the music stopped, Malinin was left trying to mask the sorrow for a crowd that included Nathan Chen, the 2022 Olympic champion; seven-time Olympic gold medal gymnast Simone Biles; actor Jeff Goldblum and his wife, Emilie.
“The nerves just went so overwhelming,” Malinin said, “and especially going into that starting pose, I just felt like all the … traumatic moments of my life really just started flooding my head, and there’s just like, so many negative thoughts that just flooded into there and I just did not handle it.”
Shaidorov was just as shocked as everyone as the realization hit that he had won the gold medal.
He was in sixth after the short program and an afterthought as the night began. The 21-year-old known for high-flying jumps but maddening inconsistency delivered the performance of his life, landing five quads in a technically flawless program.
“I went up to him and I congratulated him,” Malinin said of the new Olympic champion, “because watching him skate – I watched him the locker room – I’m just so proud of him. I heard that he had not a great season.”
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