PRAGUE (AP) \u2014 Ilia Malinin bounced back from misfiring at the Milan-Cortina Olympics by leading after the short program at the figure skating world championships on Thursday.<\/p>\n
With a new haircut Malinin presented all that the spectators expected from the defending two-time world champion at O2 Arena.<\/p>\n
He will go to Saturday\u2019s free skate with a massive lead of more than nine points after a personal-best 111.29 score in the short program.<\/p>\n
The performance showed the Olympic failure was behind him.<\/p>\n
Known as the \u201cQuad God,\u201d Malinin opened with a quad flip and a combination of quad lutz and a triple toe loop. The only skater to have successfully landed a quad axel in competition performed only a triple version of his trademark jump.<\/p>\n
French skater Adam Siao Him Fa nailed a perfect quad toe loop in combination with a triple toe loop plus a quad salchow for 101.85 points.<\/p>\n
Aleksandr Selevko of Estonia was a surprise third after a personal best 96.49.<\/p>\n
Japanese Olympic bronze medalist Shun Sato was fourth. Countryman and favorite Yuma Kagiyama, a two-time Olympic silver medalist and three-time worlds silver medalist, fell in a lutz attempt.<\/p>\n
Andrew Torgashev was seventh and fellow American Jacob Sanchez was 10th in his senior worlds debut.<\/p>\n
Malinin helped the U.S. win the team gold in Milan and was heavily favored to win individual gold with an unrivaled program. His five-point lead over Kagiyama and Siao after the short program seemed insurmountable.<\/p>\n
But in one of the biggest upsets in figure skating history, Malinin fell twice and made other glaring mistakes in a disastrous free skate, falling from first to eighth place.<\/p>\n
Malinin said he succumbed to the pressure at his first Games.<\/p>\n
Olympic champion Mikhail Shaidorov from Kazakhstan was skipping the worlds.<\/p>\n
The pairs free skate was later Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PRAGUE (AP) \u2014 Ilia Malinin bounced back from misfiring at the Milan-Cortina Olympics by leading after the short…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[243768,23,243769,102135,243766,212938,243767,217542,3,114137,74976,74973,182715,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-546811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-aleksandr-selevko","tag-america","tag-andrew-torgashev","tag-estonia","tag-figure-skating-worlds-malinin","tag-ilia-malinin","tag-jacob-sanchez","tag-mikhail-shaidorov","tag-news","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}