When you call yourself the ‘Quad God’, you had better not miss.
Ilia Malinin arrived as the hottest favourite of these Olympics, such has been his swagger and technical brilliance in recent competitions.
He is a skater seemingly impervious to pressure but, when it mattered most, he produced an error-strewn performance to fall off the podium.
In contrast, Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov, a 100-1 outsider only days ago, was flawless to produce one of the greatest shocks in Olympic figure skating history.
Malinin is not the sort to hide his talents. He completed his backstage warm-up in a tight black vest that simply read ‘Quad God’ in gold sequins.
It is 50 years since John Curry won Olympic gold for Great Britain with a routine balletic rather than athletic, one that would resemble a different sport at these Games. He landed three triples.
Four years later, Robin Cousins’ brilliance, built around his signature triple lutz, carried him to gold in Lake Placid.
Not until 1988 did Canadian Kurt Browning land the first quad, a toe loop, in competition. Only four years ago Malinin became the first to execute the dazzlingly difficult quad axel, the only jump that takes off from a forward outside edge, leaving almost no margin for error on landing.
He has also made no secret of his ambition to become the first to land a quint, with its five dizzying rotations.
Malinin began his free skate chasing history, aiming to become the first man to land seven quads in a single Olympic programme, including the devilishly difficult quad axel.
The Assago Forum held its collective breath in expectation but was left in shock rather than awe.
He landed the quad flip. He stuttered on the axel, managing only a single rotation. He stepped out of the lutz and could add only a double toe loop. The crowd sat stunned. Malinin’s eyes widened with disbelief as everything he had worked for appeared to collapse around him, while just fell down.
He bailed on the lutz, recovered to land the toe loop, then crashed again on the salchow.
It was brutal to watch, as dramatic a meltdown as Olympic figure skating has witnessed, sending Malinin tumbling to eighth place, an almost unimaginable outcome given his recent dominance of the sport.
“I’m speechless,” he said, walking through a sea of microphones and flashbulbs backstage as if in a daze. “I’m in shock, I just blew it, the first thing that came to my mind was there’s no way that just happened.
“Maybe I was too confident, I just can’t process this right now, I just have no words, it’s just crazy.
“I’ve trained all season to skate as well as I can. It just didn’t happen for me. It’s out of control. I just need to look to the future and make sure this never happens again.”
Shaidorov had been fifth after the short programme, nearly 16 points behind Malinin, but produced a stunning career-best routine built around five precise quadruple jumps.
He then watched, almost shaking with disbelief, as those ahead faltered, what should been a brief stay in the leaders’ chair turning into a sit-in.
France’s Adam Siao Him Fa, third at halfway, dropped to seventh. Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama, the silver medallist in 2022, could not capitalise either in a programme littered with errors, though it was enough to secure silver again, ahead of compatriot Shun Sato, who took bronze.
Shaidorov, just 21, was second behind Malinin at last year’s Worlds but no-one gave him a chance of gold here, the minor medals seemingly the limit of his ambition.
There is no drama so raw and undiluted as Olympic figure skating.
In a sport built on rotation and risk, it was not the self-styled Quad God but the overlooked outsider who kept his feet, while all around them lost their heads.
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