2026 Winter Olympics: Mikhail Shidorov wins men’s figure skating gold as ‘quadruple god’ Ilya Malinin collapses

Malinin received some criticism at these Games, particularly over his performance in the team event, where Kageyama outpaced him in the short program before mistakes in the free skate – in which he was not originally expected to compete – almost allowed Japan to take the gold.

In response to the pressure, Malinin’s team took him out of the Olympic bubble to train 35 miles away in Bergamo before the men’s event as they hoped it would help him reset.

His immaculate performance in the individual short program – where he finished with a five-point lead on the field – looked like that of a man in no mood to lose his two-and-a-half-year unbeaten streak.

His progress in the free skate has been ominous – and this is where Malinin dominates. In the Grand Prix Final, he finished third after the short but finished 30 points behind the field after the free, landing seven fours.

Usually he has such an advantage due to a deadly combination of courage and ability. His free skating program has a much higher technical score than any of his competitors, and will give the judges extra credit for ambition while also rewarding a higher element score.

But this was a timid routine. The quad axle is replaced by a single ring and the quad axle is reduced to a double ring. Dreams turned into rubble.

On his quad salchow, he only hit a double, then fell. Reality hit, just like ice.

Malinin’s free skate was the 15th best of the night. He received only 156.33 points, more than 40 points behind Shidorov.

He did a backflip for the crowd’s amusement, but it seemed like a desperate call for the good times he had just last week.

In the team competition, he also had the first legal backflip at the Olympics since US champion Terry Kubica in 1976 – after which it was banned for safety reasons.

Thanks in part to skaters like Frenchman Surya Bonally – who performed the move illegally but successfully at Nagano 1998 – the backflip is now legal again.

Malinin became the first at the Games to land on just one foot and flip again in the short program.

But really, none of that mattered. After the results came out, Malinin went directly to Shidorov to congratulate him.

This is Kazakhstan’s first Winter Olympic gold medal since Lillehammer 1994, when Vladimir Smirnov won the men’s 50 km cross-country skiing event. That was 10 years before 21-year-old Shedorov was born.

After a slight slip in the quadruple lutz, Shaidorov kept his head when everyone around him was losing their nerve and produced two clean quadruple techniques of his own.

Everyone welcomes the new quadruple God.