PRAGUE
\nAmerican Ilia Malinin returned to the pinnacle of his sport as he skated to a third world title on Saturday and shrugged off the shock of an eighth-place finish at last month\u2019s Olympics.
\nLaurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron of France added their first world ice dance title \u200cto last month\u2019s Olympic gold to cap a dream debut season.
\nThe 21-year-old Malinin, who arrived in Prague carrying the weight of a collapse that cost him Olympic gold and intent on redemption, scored 218.11 points for a free programme that included five quadruple jumps, and 329.40 points overall.
\n\u201cI definitely felt very pushed and loved from the crowd,\u201d Malinin said. \u201cEvery single element I did, they were all behind me and I felt that the whole way through my programme.
\n\u201cMy expectation was to leave the long programme in one piece and I definitely think that happened.\u201d
\nOlympic silver medallist Yuma Kagiyama of Japan climbed from sixth after the short programme to finish second with 306.67 after his elegant and flawless free skate to Puccini\u2019s Turandot.
\nHis compatriot Shun Sato, the bronze medallist last month in Milan, was third with 288.54 after his programme to Stravinsky\u2019s Firebird.
\nMikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan, the Olympic champion in Milan, did not compete in Prague.
\nMalinin carried a commanding lead into the final at Prague\u2019s O2 Arena after a personal\u2011best score of 111.29 in the short programme put the \u201cQuad God\u201d more than nine points clear.
\nHis free programme \u2014 entitled \u201cThe Voice\u201d and featuring his own voiceover \u2014 fell short of his massive world-record score of 238.24 at the Grand Prix Final in December, when he performed seven quad jumps, including the quad Axel, a jump only he has landed in competition.
\nBut it was a huge improvement of almost 62 points from Milan.
\nMalinin tripled the quad Axel, the jump that started the unravelling of his free programme at the Olympics, but his five quads were enough to remind the sport why he remains its most formidable force.
\n\u201cIt was really challenging and really hard,\u201d he told \u200cthe crowd. \u201cBut with you guys I was able to make it through.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PRAGUE American Ilia Malinin returned to the pinnacle of his sport as he skated to a third world title on Saturday and shrugged off the shock of an eighth-place finish at last month\u2019s Olympics. Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron of France added their first world ice dance title \u200cto last month\u2019s Olympic gold to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":95585,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95612,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95599\/revisions\/95612"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}