Kazakh figure skater Mikhail Shaidorov stepped onto the podium at his first competition as Olympic champion in men's singles. He opened the season at the Ondrej Nepela Memorial, a Challenger Series event in Bratislava, according to infohub.kz.
Shaidorov sat third after the short program and held the same position in the free skate. In his second outing he landed a solo quadruple toe loop, a flip (under-rotated by a quarter) and a lutz, a triple lutz–toe loop combination, and a sequence of quadruple toe loop, Euler, triple salchow and double axel. His only mistake came on the landing of a triple axel.
Shaidorov scored 176.77 points for the free skate. With a total of 272.75 points, he finished third and claimed bronze.
The Ondrej Nepela Memorial title went to Russia's Evgeni Semenenko, competing in a neutral status (292.09). Italy's Daniel Grassl took silver (278.80).
Meanwhile, a Junior Grand Prix stage wrapped up in Batumi, Georgia. In ice dance, the Kazakh duo of Eva Shelaeva and Ivan Solovyov finished 16th. In women's singles, Anna Sannikova placed 21st.