Olympic Judges Under Fire After Skater Allegedly ‘Robbed’ of Medal

Friday’s men’s individual figure skating competition finale in Milan might have been the wildest night in Winter Olympics history.

All three of the podium favorites, including the heavy gold frontrunner Ilia Malinin, all imploded on the ice. With all of the top trio wilting to the pressure (or choppy ice), Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov sat in stunned silence with his hand over his mouth in shock as the new champion.

But for a moment, let’s forget the “Quad God”. Let’s put aside the amazing Japanese skaters. Let’s even leave Shaidorov to the second before we give him his well-deserved flowers.

Through all the mayhem and chaos that was the ‘Red Wedding of Figure Skating,’ one performer might have had a gut punch right up there with the other skaters who failed to win the gold medal.

South Korea’s Cha Jun-hwan is one of the most consistent and hardworking figure skaters in the world, having won 10 national titles and consistently being in contention for a podium at every global event he enters.

During the short program, he put on a powerful performance but received lower scores than expected, prompting fans to complain online that Cha had been cheated.

While that seemed like a blip in the number of stories going on in the men’s figure skating world when it happened, Cha did his best in the free skate to make up for lost points.

Although he fell early on in his performance, per usual, Cha toughed through the early nerves to put on another impressive showing that had the crowd roaring.

When everything was all said and done, however, he was a subplot with Malinin’s collapse, Shaidorov’s glory, and all the other things that went on.

But he shouldn’t have been.

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Cha finished with 273.92 points.

Shun Sato of Japan finished with 274.90 points.

Cha finished fourth. By less than a point, the South Korean king of skating failed to make it to the podium.

To say fans online were perturbed by this outcome would be a slight understatement.