Figure skating-Shaidorov shocks field to win men's gold as Malinin falls apart

MILAN, Feb 13 : Kazakhstan's Mikhail Shaidorov emerged as the shock winner of the men's competition at the Milano Cortina Games on Friday as heavy favourite Ilia Malinin's free programme fell apart and he finished out of the medals in one of Olympic figure skating's biggest upsets.

Japan's Yuma Kagiyama took silver and countryman Shun Sato captured bronze on a night when many top skaters struggled to execute their jumps.

Malinin had been expected to pack in seven quadruple jumps, including the quad Axel which only he has landed in competition but the American's display unravelled as he made one mistake after another.

From the moment the expected quad Axel turned into a single Axel, he appeared to be in freefall as he made two crash landings onto the ice and ended up executing only three quads cleanly.

He looked absolutely distraught by the end of his free skate and kept shaking his head, scarcely believing the nightmare he had just endured on the biggest stage for his sport.

Having entered the final day of the men's competition with a lead of over five points from Tuesday's short programme, Friday's score of 156.33 was over 80 points short of his personal best of 238.24 and left him languishing in 15th place in the free skate segment. He ended up eighth overall with a total of 264.49 points.

Shaidorov, who had finished fifth in the short programme, topped Friday's competition with 198.64 points to earn the gold medal with a total of 291.58.

Malinin said the pressure of being the gold-medal favourite and the enormous media attention on him in his first Games was "too much to handle."

"I'm trying to understand what happened specifically," Malinin, whose performance helped the U.S. to win the team gold last weekend, told