Replay Lounge 2026 Olympics | Men

[BlissfulSynergy]

I feel terrible for Ilia. But what a show of sportsmanship for him to congratulate Shaiderov immediately after the scores came up. As for who should have been where and who shouldn't, I always thinks its wonderful for armchair skating judges to sit back and criticize.....and I mean that in the most sarcastic way. There is never a competition where some of you don't find fault with the judges. It is what it is! Congrats to Yuma and Shun for their medals. And didn't Mikhail's coach sneak into his gold medal pretty much the same way? The ice is slippery.

Yep, I already mentioned in my first post that Shaidorov's win is reminiscent of his coach, Urmanov's win in 1994. For which Urmanov was never forgiven by the skating community. But hopefully, this win will be a boon for Shaidorov, unlike what happened to Urmanov in the aftermath of his win, because he wasn't a 'popular with the media' champion. Ilia is a great sportsman. His competitors respect and admire him and his accomplishments, unlike certain Ilia-hating fans. Ilia will be okay. He has a great family and he's a true champion with huge talent.

The judges are quite often at fault, and quite often shady, at least some of them. I don't envy them their jobs. Especially not after seeing the ice dance scoring sheet judges must reference displayed and discussed in detail on the Skating Session podcast.

It most certainly, Is what it is. Those were, are, and have been my words, which I've said quite often, and which have obviously caught on in a big way in the skating community.

 

[saine]

After the results of this Olympics, I am betting that USFS lobbies hard for the Team Event to be the last, not first, event contested.

They could lobby, but I don't think it would get anywhere when they had the option to split Men and Ice Dance. It was thought that they might go for it since they had contenders in both events. Japan split Men and Canada split Ice Dance where they had contenders for the individual with a short turnaround.

Egadze and Gogolev both had better free skates here after skating both portions of the Team Event, so it wasn't necessarily the timing. Guignard/Fabbri also improved their scores from the Team Event to the individual after skating both portions. But they didn't have the expectations or hype that Malinin had. It's a lot for him to live up to and he wasn't able to overcome the pressure when the moment came.

 

[freedomlover]

This is my opinion. You can love Shun Sato and enjoy him and celebrate his bronze medal win. I do not think he's as good as the high GOE and pcs he gets. I will not tone down my opinions. I personally prefer Tomono to Sato. But I guess Tomono will be retiring. Now, try to defend Yuma being kept on the podium with a mistake in the short and multiple mistakes in the fp.

Fair to prefer Tomono to Sato- he does have the better skating skills. But alas, consistency counts for something- and that is exactly why you won't see me defending Yuma's score at all. I have been complaining in competition threads this entire season.

I would have had a Misha-Jun-Shun podium but that's just me.

 

[anonymoose_au]

I was watching on the bbc and they didn't show the winning skate. I thought "oh wouldn't it be funny if the bbc misses showing a medallist".. and they missed the champion!

OMG really?! Wow even here in Australia they show the entire last group at least on the free-to-air broadcast! So you guys only saw Yuma's skate? Because Shun skated even earlier.

Heh that's a turn out for the books!

This was every cliche about a mens skating competition turned up to 11.

Yeah I'm surprised to hear the people weren't excited watching? I was on the edge of my seat! Although I did wonder if something was wrong with the ice when Adam, Yuma and Ilia had such trouble. I've never seen Yuma have jump issues like that! He's got the best knees in the business.

I assume the lads all became acclimitised, but this competition was on super late, finishing close to midnight, yikes.

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

And shout out to Ilia for congratulating Misha so quickly, that couldn't have been easy for him but it was genuine and awesome.

I doubt it wasn't easy for Ilia to congratulate Mikhail. They both have a great deal of understanding and respect for each other. Ilia took his time, too, reassuring Mikhail that he deserved his gold medal win. A lot of people just do not know what a great, down-to-earth young man Ilia is. A lot of people tag him as too cocky. Nope. He's just talented, self-aware, and generally a cool, tough competitor. But underneath all of that he's generous and kind.

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

Fair to prefer Tomono to Sato- he does have the better skating skills. But alas, consistency counts for something- and that is exactly why you won't see me defending Yuma's score at all. I have been complaining in competition threads this entire season.

I would have had a Misha-Jun-Shun podium but that's just me.

A Misha, Jun, Sato podium is what I already said in an earlier post! Me and @lariko already discussed this very more fairer podium scenario, btw. Even Gogolev and Gumennik had a better overall competition than Yuma!!

 

[moonvine]

I reiterate: not a great competition. This is obvious in many of the performances and in the scoring results. No one received pcs in the 9s for the fp, as is usually the case for top skaters. The top three guys in the sp received pcs in the 9s. Different story in the fp.

Not a great Olympics so far either
The coverage is ghastly and exhausting. And I'm only watching hours of figure skating, with a load of annoying commercial ads. What a bust to build up four years to this anticlimax. I don't know what's happening in the other winter sports. No time to watch. Maybe I will check for highlights of other sports later, if they are still up.

Does anyone know why Peacock is shuttering Belinda Noonan's commentary? I heard her voice for the first skater in men's event. Then, she was gone. Sucks.

They advertised “no commentary.” If we want commentary we will have to wait for the Olympic blocks to expire.
In my opinion the coverage has been terrible across all sports. I highly prefer the world commentary in every sport. But NBC/Peacock has given us US commentators in everything.

 

[moonvine]

I doubt it wasn't easy for Ilia to congratulate Mikhail. They both have a great deal of understanding and respect for each other. Ilia took his time, too, reassuring Mikhail that he deserved his gold medal win. A lot of people just do not know what a great, down-to-earth young man Ilia is. A lot of people tag him as too cocky. Nope. He's just talented, self-aware, and generally a cool, tough competitor. But underneath all of that he's generous and kind.

He’s a great cat dad also.

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

Although I did wonder if something was wrong with the ice when Adam, Yuma and Ilia had such trouble. I've never seen Yuma have jump issues like that!

Yuma has had bad mess-ups before, but usually only one or two in a program, and not like this. Always, tho', the judges do not check his landings, when he makes mistakes. It's glaring. I couldn't believe how the judges contrived to keep Yuma on the podium. Guess they thought Ilia was going to be okay and did not want Yuma crushed to be off the podium if Ilia was on it.

Nothing wrong with the ice, I bet. As I said earlier, quite a number of guys in this event had uncharacteristic performances, as if they were lacking energy. I think 2 days in between short and long possibly threw off their usual physical prep regimens. Of course, some guys performed to their abilities. It would be interesting to know how all the guys in this event spent their two days off, for comparison purposes. What works for some, tho' does not work for all.

 

[Demandred]

I can't stop thinking about Ilia's last jumping pass. At this point he still had an outside chance for gold if he had hit one of his huge combos and certainly would have won the silver with such combo. Instead he popped the jump to a double and fell on it, something that almost never happens at this level. If I had seen this in a movie I would have thought it's too contrived and implausible.

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

They advertised “no commentary.” If we want commentary we will have to wait for the Olympic blocks to expire.
In my opinion the coverage has been terrible across all sports. I highly prefer the world commentary in every sport. But NBC/Peacock has given us US commentators in everything.

Just horrible coverage. Moving away from the feed randomly for no reason during some slo-mo replays to a screen that says 'We'll be back shortly.' That happened in the earlier groups, so it's probably for commercial breaks that don't show until the final groups. It's just utter stupidity. It's so hard to navigate the Peacock site in the first place.

Belinda Noonan is surely doing the commentating somewhere. But where can her voice be heard? Apparently, she did voice one earlier Peacock event. Maybe that was by mistake. I don't understand why they do this, tho'. I simply ignore all the commercials. It's just a total waste of time. Figure skating comps are long enough without forcing us to watch with brain-draining ads tacked-on!

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

I think that maybe Ilia "lost" his jump/quad abilities, similar to the Simone Biles "twisties" issue that caused her to drop out of the 2020 Olympics.

LOL! No. He had to break in new boots. He hasn't been performing quad-axel all season strategically to save his energy, but he probably needed to try it somewhere earlier. I think he had planned it in the team event sp, but having not done it for a while, his muscle memory was off. Plus, the media over-hype is excessive. He had weathered the ups-and-downs of the team event. He was okay in the individual sp, but still very noticeably tight.

Then, the unusual two days off. Still, constant media pressure. His body at this point is ready to wind down, but he has to rev up again for the fp. Then he has to wait hours backstage, and notices some of the guys are racking up high numbers over 100, which also usually does not happen in most events. While Yuma has often been inconsistent this season in the fp, he too, was backstage waiting, and noticing high numbers being posted by some guys.

Gymnastics on various apparatus is not the same as figure skating jumping on ice. Ilia surely did NOT have 'the twisties' like Simone Biles. Ilia's thought process, mental game, and physical readiness were just not the same as usual, because this event is highly out-of-the-ordinary. And he was not comfortable with his boots.

 

[Demandred]

Ilia landed 3 very nice quads in this free program, including one in a very difficult combo, so he clearly haven't lost his ability to do it. I think it was mostly nerves, he even fell on a 2S.

 

[gsk8]

After seeing his scores, Malinin didn't hesitate to head to the leader's chair to congratulate Shaidorov.

"I watched him skate from the locker room, and I'm just so proud of him," said Malinin. "I heard he didn't have the best season. We're all in this sport together, and we're there for each other. That's what makes this sport special. I think people forget that sometimes. They only see us competing and assume we're rivals without good relationships. But it's actually the opposite. There's joy, motivation, and encouragement. We're like a big family."

 

[gsk8]

"My goal tonight was just to show everything I can do and to show a beautiful performance and to prove and to show how much figure skating has grown in Kazakhstan," said Shaidorov. "Skating early in the group was actually a plus for me. I just went out, retied my laces, and skated. I had been waiting all day for this moment, and when it was finally time, I just really wanted to go out there and perform."

"I don't even know… these emotions are incredible!" he added. " I've been working for this since childhood. Today, I just wanted to enjoy the moment and show everything I've worked on for all these years, and I did that."

 

[gsk8]

“At first, he didn’t even realize he’d won a medal,” said Kagiyama of Sato. “Even when I said, ‘You won a medal’, he reacted like, ‘Huh?’ But I think it’s a medal Shun earned with his own strength, so I’m genuinely happy for him. From now on, we’ll continue to compete in the same events together. There’s also the World Championship coming up. I want to win against him. I kept losing in the free skate, so I want to gain more strength and do my best.”

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

they had the option to split Men and Ice Dance. It was thought that they might go for it since they had contenders in both events.

Yep, and they didn't go for those options, for excellent reasons. The options they went with are the options that won the U.S. the gold medal in the team event, eh!

Ilia was not gassed due to going twice in the team event. It's the other issues already stated. The men's event starting close after the team event, and having an unusual two-day wait after the sp. Plus, Ilia had to break-in new boots recently. I doubt he's yet comfortable with his boots. The media over-hype and intensity of the event. A long wait backstage seeing a number of guys reaching tech scores over 100. And then, Ilia also likely was feeling pressure to go for a quad-axel, which he hasn't been performing all season in order to pace himself. His muscle memory for the quad-axel, as a result, has seemed to be missing. Perhaps, as I mentioned earlier, Ilia needed to think safe and conservative, and not try for the quad-axel, which he popped to a single. He seemed to be deflated or disoriented afterward.

 

[anonymoose_au]

After seeing his scores, Malinin didn't hesitate to head to the leader's chair to congratulate Shaidorov.

Indeed! That was a special moment Sportsmanship seems really important to current top figure skaters and it's really nice to see.

It would be so hard to have the presence of mind to congratulate others after such a big disappointment, not even because you feel they don't deserve it but because getting out of your own head at that moment is so difficult.

The end of this event could have been a huge bummer with three really tough skates back to back to back, but all the top skaters were so nice to each other. Yuma gets a special award for best sportsman of the day though! He was so happy for Shun and Misha, what a great guy!

 

[gsk8]

“I really gave my best today here,” said Cha. “Even though I made a mistake, I fought through everything else. I gave everything today, so I’m proud of myself that I came here and I didn’t give up. It was through those hard times.”

“I didn’t expect the (fourth) placement because my main goal at this point was to have my moment and enjoy that moment,” he added. “On that side, I think I achieved that goal. So, I was already proud of myself and happy.”

 

[anonymoose_au]

Hooray for Jun He really brought it today! Especially after that big fall! He managed to shake it off and put on a stunning performance. As I've said I just love his Ina Bauer, it's such a huge highlight.

I'm happy that he's happy with how he skated today. Also the stuffie with the Italian and Korean flags was adorable.