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For nearly two years, Ilia Malinin has made men’s figure skating feel predictable in the most spectacular of ways. On Friday night on the southern outskirts of Milan, the Olympic Games reminded the sport – and perhaps Malinin himself – that predictability is never guaranteed on its biggest stage.
The overwhelming favorite entering the free skate, the 21-year-old American instead saw the Olympic title slip away to Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov after an error-strewn performance that will rank among the biggest upsets in modern figure skating history.
Shaidorov’s season-best total of 291.58 vaulted him from fifth after the short program as one favored 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 wasn’t to be.
Skating last, with the Olympic title seemingly within reach after his closest rivals faltered, Malinin opened with a quad flip and quad lutz. But mistakes quickly followed. 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, though he salvaged 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.
The shift in tone was immediate. The invincibility that has defined Malinin’s competitive aura over the past two seasons suddenly looked fragile.
For Shaidorov, the moment marked a career breakthrough. The Kazakh skater delivered the kind of clean, composed free skate that wins Olympic titles when favorites unravel, capitalizing fully on the chaos unfolding ahead of him.
This is a developing story.
