Ilia Malinin skated the best free program in history at the World Championships.
Figure skating The men's competition of the World Cup culminated in the Saturday evening free program in Montreal, Canada.
To be the winner skated the 19-year-old American superstar Ilia Malin. The first World Championship gold of his career came with a completely unique performance.
Malin was only the second skater ever to include six quadruple jumps in his free program. On top, he was the first to add a quadruple axel, in which no figure skater has succeeded before Malinin.
A successful performance naturally meant a world record. The point balance of the free program is 227.79 by Nathan Chen with 2.87 points of the previous ME.
Malinin, who rewrote the history of figure skating behind in second place skated Japan Yuma Kagiyama. He was more than 24 points behind the American.
Master's after, the bronze medalist garnered the most attention Adam Siao Him Fa.
The Frenchman repeated his shocking trick at the European Championships in January. He broke the forbidden back flip in the middle of the free program.
“Well! That's where it came from,” exclaimed Yle's narrator Sara Honkavaara as the audience burst into wild applause.
“This is such a small demonstration within an otherwise perfect program.”
Rough grabbing always results in a two-point deduction. In Lithuania in January, it did not prevent Siao Him Fan from winning the EC gold.
“I don't really know who he's fighting,” thought the expert Mika Saarelainen.
“Here we are going to break the rules on purpose, it's just stupid in my opinion. But that's his choice.”
Even now, despite the reduction, Siao Him Fan's free program was the second best after Malinin. With it, even after the catastrophic short program, he still won medals.
The race the only Finnish representative Valtter Virtanen was 34th after the short program and didn't make it to the next round.
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