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MILAN — Two days and 11 skaters into figure skating’s team event, the United States’ gold-medal hopes hinged on one final skater.
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Ilia Malinin, who at only 21 years old had already earned a world championship and developed an ability to pull off tricks no other man in history had accomplished, had to catch himself on a stumble that drew gasps, then threw a backflip — his second in as many nights, and in Olympic history — that drew screams.
Then, he had to wait out the routine of Japan’s last entrant.
It was nail-biting, nerve-wracking theater that ended with all of the air sucked out of a once-raucous Milan Ice Skating Arena as Shun Sato’s final score was read through the stadium’s public-address system. When it fell well short of Malinin’s score, seven U.S. athletes who had competed in the team event hugged one another just feet from the ice.
The final score read U.S. 69, Japan 68. Italy secured the bronze with 60 points.
Malinin has earned his first career Olympic medal.
It was the first medal handed out in figure skating at these Games, and marked the second consecutive Olympics in which the U.S. won the event. To do it, the U.S. had to endure a two-day event that combined scores from four different disciplines during Saturday’s qualifying rounds, and four more competitions in Sunday’s final.
The U.S. used the same teams in most events — Madison Chock and Evan Bates participated in both rhythm and free dance; Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea competed in both days of pairs skating; and Malinin handled men’s singles. The only exception was women’s singles skating, in which Alysa Liu was used Saturday while Amber Glenn skated Sunday.
Glenn, the three-time reigning U.S. champion, said she felt “guilty” that her third-place finish had lost the U.S. lead in the penultimate competition Sunday and that she felt run down by training and unfamiliar with the team-event format.
All of it had left the U.S. and Japan tied for first, with 59 points, entering Sunday’s final discipline, which began after 10 p.m. local time. If Malinin, the Fairfax, Virginia, native who was born for such a stage — his parents skated at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics — was nervous, it did not show as he bounded on his skates and pumped a fist on his way to the ice during his preskate introduction. He unzipped a Team USA jacket to reveal a sparkly, black top. Japan’s entrant, Sato, was more reserved.
Malinin might be figure skating’s biggest star, but he is not invincible. Even despite that backflip, his routine Saturday was only good enough for second behind Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama.
Malinin also was not perfect on Sunday. He needed to put both hands on the ice to steady himself after a shaky fall, but quickly upped the difficulty of his routine beyond anything his competitors could match by backflipping at center ice. He exited the routine, yelling toward fans. His score of 200.03 easily put him into first place, more than 20 points ahead of the second-place Italian skater. And it set the bar for what Japan needed to clear for a gold medal.
Sato scored 194.86.
