In a stunning, dramatic upset, Kazakstan's Mikhail Shaidorov won gold in the Men's competition at the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milano Cortina. Japan's Yuma Kagiyama and Shun Sato took the silver and bronze medals, as many predicted, but with shaky performances. Yet the skate most will be talking about was the shocking collapse of "Quad God" Ilia Malinin in the free program, plummeting the expected champion from 1st to 8th place overall.
In this recap and reaction to the men's final, we do our best to celebrate the winners while examining how things went horribly awry for the star of USA men's figure skating.
Looking ahead, we also preview the Pairs competition, starting this weekend, including our podium predictions.
We're thrilled for Mikhail, who put together two fantastic skates, coming through in the clutch again as the hero of Kazakstan skating. But, of course, we're also incredibly heartbroken for Ilia, who had the worst skate of his career at exactly the worst moment. After 3 undefeated years, the pressure of Olympic ice overwhelmed him.
It's a result nobody saw coming — though we should have listened closer to Wendy's "crystal ball" from our preview episode...
Chapters
00:00:00 Intro
00:02:33 The Men's Olympic Podium
00:17:50 NBC-ification
00:23:04 Ilia Malinin
00:38:24 The Rest of the Men's Field
00:48:55 Gold in our Hearts
00:51:17 Pairs Preview
00:57:20 Pairs Podium Predictions
00:59:38 Wrap-Up
