MIHAIL SHAJDOROV knows why he spent five years specially preparing for the 25th Winter Olympics in Milan.
The 21-year-old Olympic gold medalist in figure skating, the first in Kazakhstan's history in that discipline, received a check for $250.000 from the state, one of the most beautifully designed medals in the world, and a great recognition - Baris II, and not only that.
The Kazakh singer, whose song Misha performed, will give the gold medalist a car!
Misha, along with Russian Pyotr Gumenik, was the only one in the final to perform the program without a mistake. The Russian finished sixth, because the judges did not know how to score the competitor who, due to a five-year isolation, was performing for the first time and had no rating.
In addition, Pjotr, who delighted the entire world public, did not have music in his short program - the problem was copyright! He did not even have adequate conditions, but he chose to be world-famous and the Federation has now included him in the rating and invited him to perform on February 21 at the Figure Skating Gala Evening.
The world record holder and team gold medalist, Ilia Malinin from America, failed because he could not cope with the pressure of immense popularity and the 20-year-old "King of the Quad" did not celebrate for the first time in two years.
In the decisive performance for the team gold, he forced Novak Djokovic to stand up and applaud after a quadruple Axel, which he is the only one who can perform in the official program because it defies gravity and the laws of physics.
In addition, he was the first to perform a backflip after a decades-long ban, and the first to do it on one skate, and the world's greatest athlete grabbed his head.
"Malinjin didn't lose because of the "expenditure" in the team performance, the media, the fame and all that... The same thing happened to me in Salt Lake City - I was driven to win and I burned out," explained one of the best ever, Olympic champion from Russia, Evgeni Plushenko.
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