AfriPulse
Heading into the free skate at the Milan Cortina Olympics, the U.S. skater was in the lead.
MILAN, Metropolitan City of Milan — On Friday, American figure skating prodigy Ilia Malinin experienced a heart-wrenching free skate, falling twice and slipping off the podium at the Milan Cortina Olympics, allowing Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov to seize a remarkable gold medal victory.
The 21-year-old Malinin was visibly distraught as he exited the ice, holding back tears after enduring one of the most challenging nights of his career, leaving the star-studded audience at Milano Ice Arena in shock.
During his performance, Malinin fell twice and failed to execute several anticipated jumps, resulting in a loss of nearly 72 points from jumping errors, according to NBC commentators.
Malinin had led after the short program, holding a more than five-point advantage over his nearest competitor, Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama. He scored 156.33 in the free skate, bringing his two-day competition total to 264.49, which ultimately placed him in 8th position.
“I was not expecting that,” he said in an NBC interview afterward. “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 was 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.
When he performed his free skate, he did not do the quad axel.
What makes the quad axel so difficult is that the axel is the only one of figure skating’s six primary jumps that starts facing forward, giving it an extra half revolution. In fact, the jump is so difficult even elite skaters struggle with the triple version of it.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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