Tonight, I watched something totally extraordinary!
The Men's Free Skate at the 2024 World Figure Skating Championships ended tonight with the Men's Free Skate competition.
What looked like a shootout between Shoma Uno (first going into the program and world champion the past two years), Yuma Kagiyama (second going into the program and 2nd place in the past world championship) and Ilia Malinin (third going in and last year's 3rd place winner). Less than two points separated 1st place from 3rd place.
Uno skated first in the final grouping, and he was good but made mistakes that seemed to weigh on the rest of his program. His final score put him into second place behind the French skater who had vaulted from 19th place to first place with his earlier free skate!
Next was Kagiyama and his skate was brilliant. he did have a fall that cost him one point, but he was in first place and, seemingly, the title was going to be his. At best, I thought Malinin might finish 2nd, but also might place 3rd.
Malinin skated last. All year, he has improved, but his component scores (artistry) have always suffered compared to his technical scores. Both Uno and Kagiyama had high component scores, but Jason Brown's were higher than any all night and he was in fourth place at this time.
Malinin started out with his quad axel, the hardest jump to do. He landed it first last year and has only trotted it out a couple of times this season. He followed the axel with five more perfectly executed quads, two of which were in the second half of his program (which gave him an additional 10% boost to each jump's value).
To make a long story shorter, he finished the night with the highest technical score ever recorded, and his component score was rather high, as well. He won the competition by 24 points, and he bested Nathan Chen's record combined skating score (224) by nine points (333).
It was a stunning skate, amazing to watch, breathtaking, in fact.
