The judges of the men’s Olympic figure skating tournament were not ready to meet with Pyotr Gumennik and treated him with terrible prejudice, because they could only pursue national interests. However, this should not distract from the main thing: the national champion performed more than worthily and has everything to remain in the global elite in the coming years. But the sensationally collapsed Ilya Malinin will not only have to endure psychological trauma and, most likely, lose part of his sponsorship contracts, but also necessarily rehabilitate himself in a duel with Mikhail Shaidorov.

The phone rang in the night, and I saw on the screen a message from a man I knew well from sports days.: “Welcome to the Olympic Games!”

Video above: Many video memes are going around the internet about the questionable scores that some figure skaters received.

It didn’t take much thought to figure out that the reason to type this phrase was the men’s singles final with Mikhail Shaidorov’s incredible victory, Peter Gumennik’s excellent rental, and Ilya Malinin’s shattered illusion of the omnipotence of the “god of foursomes.”

This final will excite the sports world for a long time. The end of such a heat at the Olympic Games has never happened in my memory.

The Olympic Games are a wildly cruel and sometimes mystical thing. How can you not connect the popular figure skater soundtrack “Dune” (Mikhail Shaidorov also skated his short program to it) and the lines from the original book: “Here lies God defeated, he has fallen, and he has fallen low. That’s why we built a higher pedestal…”

Surprisingly, the most discussed figure was not Shaidorov after his Olympic victory, but two athletes who never reached the podium in Milan, Ilya Malinin and Peter Gumennik. Now it definitely makes no sense to argue for the thousandth time how badly the jumps of the Russian figure skater were actually undone and how biased the judges turned out to be towards the debutant.

Bias certainly took place. It’s not even legitimate to say that Peter’s mistakes were dealt with too harshly. The scores were only a consequence of the fact that a very thoughtful and by no means solo game was initially played against Humennik: even a cursory glance at the detailed personalization of the judges’ scores is enough to see this.

Perhaps they were afraid of the Russian figure skater. But it seems to me that Elena Tchaikovsky’s opinion is closer to the truth that the referees simply did not know what to do with the guy who fell on world figure skating out of the blue and actually interfered with everyone: the Italians, who pulled Daniel Grassl with all their might; the Swiss — with Lucas Brichgi; the Canadians — with Steven Gogol; even for Georgians, with Nika Egadze, who never shone at the Games.

“He was the first in terms of rental, aristocracy, breadth of riding, and image disclosure. I did all the jumps, I skated great, but there was a terrible incident — the judges were not ready to meet with Humennik. They just didn’t know him, hadn’t seen him for four years, hadn’t heard of him, hadn’t worked with him. Therefore, it turned out what happened,” concluded Tchaikovsky sadly.

Such a plot, alas, was predicted. It’s just that now I really want to talk about something else. Humennik’s commitment to prolong his career for at least four years, until the next Games, seemed much more important to me.

“I thought about it this morning: I like being here so much, I would really like to go to the Olympics in 2030,” Peter said after his ride in the final. It was there that he seemed to taste this dish for real.

It is important that a figure skater has absolutely everything to stay in the world’s top: the ability to complicate an arbitrary program, leaving it very balanced; time to adjust and automate his jumps, eliminating the possibility of even accidental short cuts; excellent nervous system; plasticity, expressiveness and charisma.

In other words, no matter which way the rules of single skating are turned after the Games, by definition they are not capable of making life difficult for a Gambler. So why not take full advantage of it? The only thing missing for complete happiness is the decision of the International Skating Union to invite Peter to the March World Championships, if only as an apology for the judicial absurdity that was arranged in Milan with the connivance of the organization.

Malinin is much more difficult. Before making any plans, he has to live through the humiliation he experienced in the finale to the end. Team gold, despite the fact that Ilya made perhaps the greatest contribution to its extraction, is a very unimportant substitute here. Especially now, when the skater’s mind is desperately clinging to any straw that would allow us to find the causes of the disaster from the outside.

Ilya’s words on NBC that if the American Figure Skating Federation had sent him to the Games four years ago, when he finished second behind Nathan Chen at the national championships, he would not have skated like this in Milan, look like such a straw.

And now the main character of the fourth anniversary may well not be at the demonstrations. It is unclear how the “contract day” will turn out for him — the very day after the final, when various sponsorship agreements are signed for the next few years. I believe that all kinds of merchandise with Ilya’s trademark will for a long time cause his fans not a sense of belonging to the beautiful and unattainable world of the celestial, but a deep inner pain, a desire to rid themselves of any associations with the Olympic triumph that never took place.

Even the idea of a grandiose show, where Malinin was going to demonstrate the world’s first five-turn jump performance after the Games, now seems like a ridiculous and unnecessary idea. It takes time to recover from the blow and regain self-confidence.

Is it worth waiting for Ilya at the World Cup now? Theoretically, he should definitely go there, at least in order to restore the status quo and at the same time rehabilitate himself for the Olympic hire. But another question immediately arises: is it worth waiting for Mikhail Shaidorov in Prague? I’m afraid that without this duel, the story will simply not be destined to loop.

And banal reasons can prevent an Olympic champion from going to the post-Olympic world championship: there will probably be so many celebrations at home in Kazakhstan, including meetings with top officials of the state, that the newly minted champion may simply not be able to restore the necessary emotional and physical balance.

Although it would be an incredibly intriguing end to the season.