Figure skating-Shaidorov shocks rivals to capture gold as 'Quad God' Malinin crumbles

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 his 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 spectacularly as he made one mistake after another. 

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

NIGHTMARE FOR MALININ

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. 

The skater who had regularly obliterated his competition in the run-up to his first Games, ended up eighth overall with a total of 264.49 points, while Shaidorov was also left shaking his head in disbelief after triumphing with 291.58.

Malinin said the pressure of being the gold-medal favourite and the enormous media attention that came with it was "too much to handle." 

"I'm trying to understand what happened," Malinin, whose performance helped