For nearly two years, Ilia Malinin has made men’s figure skating feel predictable in the most spectacular of ways. On Friday night in Milan, the Olympic Games reminded the sport – and perhaps Malinin himself – that predictability is never guaranteed on its biggest stage.
The overwhelming favourite entering the free skate, the 21-year-old American saw the Olympic title slip away to Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov after an error-strewn performance that will go down among the biggest shocks in figure skating history. Shaidorov’s season-best total of 291.58 vaulted him from fifth after the short programme as one favoured contender after another faltered. Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama (280.06) and Shun Sato (274.90) took silver and bronze respectively.
Malinin entered the final segment with a lead of just over five points, a margin that under normal circumstances would have allowed him to skate conservatively and still win. It was not to be. Skating last, he opened with a quad flip and quad lutz, but the mistakes quickly piled up. The planned quad axel was reduced to a single and later he fell on another quad lutz. He also doubled jumps he would normally complete with more rotations, salvaging points with a quad toe loop combination. He finished with 156.33 in the free skate and 264.49 overall, left shockingly off the podium in a distant eighth place, nearly 30 points adrift of Shaidorov.
“I blew it,” Malinin said afterward. “That’s honestly the first thing that came to my mind. There’s no way that just happened. I was preparing the whole season and was so confident in my program, so confident with everything. I have no words really.” The result ended an unbeaten streak of more than two years spanning 14 competitions, including two world titles and three consecutive Grand Prix final victories. Entering the Milano Cortina Games, Malinin had redefined the technical boundaries of the sport, becoming the only skater in history to land the quadruple axel in competition.
For Shaidorov, the moment marked a career breakthrough and a milestone for Kazakhstan. His clean, composed free skate – built on five quads – proved exactly the type of performance that wins Olympic titles when favourites unravel. He became the first Kazakh Olympic figure skating champion, delivering his country’s first gold medal at these Games and its first gold in any Winter Olympic sport since Lillehammer 1994.
