One of the biggest surprises of the beginning of the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games happened in the men's figure skating tournament. Kazakhstan's Mikhail Shaidorov triumphed with the Olympic title, although after the short program he was only in fifth place.
The 2025 world vice-champion performed an impressive free program. He opened with a triple Axel - quadruple salchow combination, then added four more quadruple jumps and a second triple Axel. He collected 114.68 points for the technical elements alone, and his free score reached 198.64 - a personal record. With a total of 291.58 points, Shaidorov won convincingly, more than 10 points ahead of his competitors, and brought Kazakhstan its first Olympic title at these Games.
The 21-year-old athlete also became the first Kazakh to win gold at a Winter Olympics since 1994, when Vladimir Smirnov triumphed in the 50 km classic cross-country skiing. His coach is 1994 Olympic champion Alexei Urmanov.
The silver medal was won by Japan's Yuma Kagiyama with 280.06 points - his second consecutive honor after Beijing 2022, and the bronze went to his compatriot Shun Sato with 274.90 points, although he was ninth after the short program.
The biggest shock, however, was the performance of Ilya Malinin. The two-time Olympic champion and leader after the short program was unable to withstand the pressure. He completed only four of the planned seven quadruple jumps, with errors, fell twice and received only a 15th grade for the free program. Thus, the American fell to eighth place in the final standings.
„I failed. That's the first thing that comes to mind. I had been preparing all season and was confident in my program. "I'm really speechless," Malinin told NBC, admitting that the pressure and huge expectations of his first Olympic Games were "too much to handle."
Among the spectators in the hall was seven-time Olympic gymnastics champion Simone Biles, for whom this was her first visit to the Winter Games.
The 2026 European champion Nika Egadze (Georgia) finished tenth, while two-time European champion Adam Xiao Him Fa, who was third after the short program, remained seventh in the final standings.