2026 Winter Olympics: Mikhail Shaidorov wins men’s figure skating gold as ‘Quad God’ Ilia Malinin crumbles
Malinin had faced some criticism at these Games, particularly regarding his performance in the team event, where he was outclassed by Kagiyama in the short program; Errors in the free skate, which they were not initially expected to compete in, had nearly allowed Japan to win gold.
Reacting to the pressure, Malinin’s team took him outside the Olympic bubble to train 35 miles away in Bergamo before the men’s event, hoping it would help reset.
His clean-up performance in the individual short program (finishing five points ahead of the field) looked like that of a man in no mood to lose his two-and-a-half-year unbeaten streak.
His leadership in the free skate was concerning; This is where Malinin dominates. In the Grand Prix Final, he finished third after the short, but still finished 30 points clear of the field after the free throw, hitting seven fours.
He usually has such an advantage due to the lethal combination of fearlessness and skill. The free skating program has a much higher technical score than any of its competitors, and while the judges will give extra credit for ambition, they will also reward it with a higher component score.
But this was a timid routine. The quad axle has been converted into a single loop, a quad axle has been reduced to one two. Dreams turned into a pile of rubble.
He hit just one double in his quadruple salchow, then fell. Reality hit like ice.
Malinin’s free skate was the 15th best of the night. He earned just 156.33 points, more than 40 points behind Shaidorov.
He did a backflip to amuse the crowd, but it seemed like a desperate call back to the good times of last week.
In the team event, he also performed the first legal backflip at an Olympic Games since U.S. champion Terry Kubicka in 1976; It was subsequently banned for security reasons.
The backflip is now legal again, thanks to skaters like Frenchman Surya Bonaly, who performed the move illegally but successfully in Nagano 1998.
Malinin became the first person at the Games to land the ball with one foot and did a somersault again in the short program.
But in reality, none of this mattered. After the scores came in, Malinin went directly to Shaidorov and congratulated him.
This was Kazakhstan’s first Winter Olympic gold medal since Lillehammer 1994, when Vladimir Smirnov won the men’s 50 km cross-country skiing race. This was 10 years before 21-year-old Shaidorov was born.
After a slight slip on the quad lutz, Shaidorov kept his head and produced two clean quad techniques of his own while everyone else was losing their minds.
All hail the new Fourfold God.
