He stood atop the podium in men’s individual figure skating after a stunning end to the competition, earning his country’s second Winter Olympics gold medal.
MILAN, Metropolitan City of Milan — In a stunning twist in men’s figure skating at the 2026 Olympics, Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan — who was an afterthought going into Friday’s competition — performed a flawless free skate program and won gold Friday.
Shaidorov finished with a career-best 291.58 points to give his nation its first gold medal of these Winter Games. Yuma Kagiyama earned his second consecutive Olympic silver medal, and his Japanese teammate Shun Sato took bronze.
Then there was U.S. skater Ilia Malinin, who was leading after the short program and favored to win gold. He dropped all the way to eighth place after a disastrous free skate.
It was one of the biggest upsets in recent Olympic figure skating history.
Shaidorov was just as shocked as everyone as the realization hit that he had won the gold medal.
“It was very surprising,” Shaidorov after winning the Olympic gold medal, NBC reported. “(Malinin is) very important for figure skating.”
He was only in sixth after the short program and an afterthought as the night began. The 21-year-old from Almaty, Kazakhstan, known for high-flying jumps but maddening inconsistency delivered the performance of his life, landing five quads in a technically flawless program.
It seemed altogether fitting that Coldplay’s song “Viva La Vida” played after the medal ceremony, as Shaidorov and his fellow medalists from Japan took a victory lap. “I used to rule the world,” the lyrics begin.
“I went up to him and I congratulated him,” Malinin said of the new Olympic champion, “Because watching him skate — I watched him the locker room — I’m just so proud of him. I heard that he had not a great season.”
How many medals has Kazakhstan won at the Winter Olympics?
Kazakhstan, a landlocked country in Central Asia, has sent athletes to every Olympics since first participating in 1994. Previous to that, Kazakh athletes competed as part of the Soviet Union team.
At the 1994 Lillehammer Games, Kazakhstan won one gold and two silver medals. All three medals were won by cross-country skier Vladimir Smirnov. That was more than 10 years before Shaidorov was born.
On Friday, Shaidorov became his country’s second Winter Olympian to win gold.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.