US star Ilia Malinin on course for gold at the World Cup after falling from the Olympics

Malinin changed his program compared to the Olympic performance and did well with it. The quadruple Axel The combination also came later Quadruple Lutz/Triple Toeloop the title holder of the last two years was sure. Malinin beat his previous short program top mark from last year’s World Championships by 0.88 points.

Siao Him Fa also ran excellently and is more than five points ahead of the third-placed Estonian Alexander Selevko. The Kazakh Olympic champion Mikhail Shaidorov had not traveled to the Czech Republic.

Maurizio Zandron eliminated

For the Austrian Maurizio Zandron His last world title fights are over, only the top 24 made it to the free program scheduled for Saturday (12.30 p.m.). The 33-year-old had announced the end of his career at the end of this season and wanted to show his potential again to the music “Earth Song” by Michael Jackson. However, with 67.82 points, the South Tyrolean native was more than 15 points away from his World Cup best set four years ago. Zandron’s best World Cup placement remains 17th in 2022. At the European Championship level he was eleventh in 2023.

Mikutina falls due to applause

Olga Mikutina had come to 16th place in the women’s short program the day before after a performance that resulted in a fall. “I was very focused, but there was an incredible amount of support from the audience. People started clapping during the program, which threw me off course for a moment. At that moment I was more with the people than with myself and that’s how the mistake happened,” explained the 22-year-old before the Friday freestyle (6 p.m.). After returning home from the Olympics, she felt like she was treated “like a celebrity” at her US university.

From an Austrian perspective there were still on Thursday Gabriella Izzo/Luc Maierhofer in use in the pairs free skate. The team stationed in Salzburg came 19th out of 21 pairs in the short program on Wednesday and thus made it into the top 20 required to advance.